I, Spy
by ucsbdad
Summary: This is a sequel to Four of a Kind and Alexis's in Wonderland as once again Caskett find themselves going to Alternate Universes. Chapter Twenty. And so it goes. COMPLETE!
1. Chapter 1

I, Spy

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: Of course I don't own Castle! Do I? Rating: M, in spots. Time: The future. After season eight, but before children.

 **Author's note: This is a sequel to** ** _Alexis's in Wonderland_** **and** ** _Four of a Kind_** **. Once again our intrepid heroes find themselves going into alternate universes.**

 **Chapter One. One of Our Storms is Missing.**

"This is unbelievably beautiful." Kate said, taking her husband's hand.

"You like it?" Castle was beaming with pride at having made his wife happy.

"Like it? I love it. When I told you I was burned out from running the precinct, I was hoping you'd take me to the Hamptons for a week. I never expected _this_."

This, was a large, single story, rock and timber home with three bedrooms, two and a half baths, a family room and as the Airbnb ad had said, all modern conveniences. It sat on a deserted stretch of New Zealand's South Island, about two hundred yards away from the Tasman Sea, facing Australia some 2500 miles away.

"And we're here for a whole month, not counting travel time." Rick hugged Kate. "By the time we get back, you'll be so unburned out that you'll probably eliminate crime from New York all together.

"I would have settled for the Hamptons you know. As long as you were with me."

Rick snorted. "The Hamptons? Too close to One PP. Every time the Chief of Police lost his hat, they'd be calling you in a panic. This way, we're twenty miles from the nearest town, by four wheel drive," He gestured to the Land Rover behind them, "Although we do have a satellite dish and we can keep in touch with the family with that. And get internet access."

"I still feel like I'm intruding." Said a second female voice.

Kate turned to face Simone Renoir. Simone had been born Kathleen Beckett on an alternate Earth, and had been another of the many Kate Becketts they'd found throughout the many Earths they had visited. When Kathleen had returned with them to their Earth, a little cosmetic surgery and an expensive new identity had turned her into a woman who looked like she could be Kate's sister, although everyone was told there was no relationship. As long as no one checked Simone's fingerprints or DNA, who, and what, she was would remain a secret.

"Nonsense, Simone." Kate hugged the other woman. "You're like a sister to me. And after what happened with Paul, you needed a break as much as I did."

Simone shuddered. "Please never mention that bastard's name to me again. Every time I hear it, I'm right back in our bedroom, with him on top of her, grunting and…." Simone stopped and began to cry softly on Kate's shoulder.

"Take her inside and I'll unpack the car." Rick said. "I'm cooking dinner tonight for you two. I guarantee this will be a night you won't forget."

Rick didn't know how accurate that was.

Rick found that the kitchen was large, sparkling clean and had everything a chef could ask for. He soon produced a dinner of a garden salad, filet mignon, fresh corn on the cob, fresh peas and chocolate ice cream.

After dinner, the three sat in the living room, sipping coffee and looking out at the sun setting into the ocean.

Rick heard a soft scrape in the kitchen and went to see what it was. He stepped into the kitchen to find six armed men, dressed in black facing him. Their faces were obscured by black face paint and what he thought were night vision goggles. He raised his hands over his head and backed into the living room. Kate saw him and automatically reached for the Glock that was in the safe back in Manhattan. She shot to her feet, prepared to fight. Then seeing that the men were armed with assault rifles she relaxed. Fighting would just get them killed.

"You can have everything we have. I'll show you where everything is. Just don't hurt my wife and our friend." As he spoke, six more armed men came through the front door.

"Mr. Castle, all we want to do is keep the three of you alive. Now, we have to go right now. Leave everything. We don't have much time. It's just your wife and Ms. Renoir with you? No one else?"

Castle nodded, shocked. _What the hell was going on?_ He thought.

"What's this all about?" Kate asked in a firm voice.

"It's about keeping everyone alive. We can have a nice long discussion and all end up dead or we can leave now. I'm in charge and I say we leave now."

"We leave now." Kate agreed, grabbing a jacket from a coat tree by the door. Rick grabbed his laptop and a coat, as well as one for Simone.

But before they left the house, the electricity went off. "We did that. It's okay. Now head for the beach." The leader said.

They ran across a grassy strip, over a stretch of gravel and arrived at the beach. Everyone knelt at the water's edge. Castle looked around, but could see no boats. How were they supposed to get away from whoever, whatever was going to kill them? He wondered if this was trap and that he and Kate and Simone weren't going to be shot there on the beach.

"Watch out." The man beside him said. "LCUs are coming up."

The words were hardly out of his mouth when two large _somethings_ drove up out of the ocean stopped just a few feet out of the water.

"Go! Go!" Someone yelled.

"To the back! There a ramp there. Go inside and sit." The man next to Castle said.

The three stumbled inside where it was totally dark. With some help, Castle found a canvas seat and someone put a harness over his shoulders and fastened it between his legs.

The ramp closed and the machines began backing into the surf. Red lighting came on inside. Castle saw Kate and Simone across from him and breathed a sigh of relief. "You two okay?"

"Yes. Are you?"

"I guess." Castle turned to the man sitting next to him. "What is this thing?"

"LCU." Was the brief reply. Seeing Castle's look of confusion, he went on. "Landing Craft, Underwater. It's a mini-sub with tracks like a tank for going on land. Mostly it's made of a ceramic matrix. Strong as steel, but very light, so it'll float in spite of being small. It carries twelve troops, three crew, and is armed with a thirty mike mike and a coax machine gun. It's a cool ride."

Castle decided that they were with some kind of military force, but who and more importantly, why, he had no idea. The leader came over to him and handed him a set of goggles attached to a wire. "Put these on. It'll give you a good visual of the house." A quick look showed that Kate and Simone were also getting the goggles. Castle put his on and saw their house in the greenish images he associated with the night vision videos he saw regularly on the TV news.

"There! To the north. See the trucks pulling up?"

Castle looked. Four pickups had stopped several hundred yards from the house. Two dozen or so men ran for the house. There was a flash of light and then the goggles were went out for a second.

"Light overload." Said a voice beside him. "They used an RPG, rocket propelled grenade, on the house to bust in. See the flashes? Those are gunshots. Full auto. Spray and pray. Now, just wait for it."

The men seemed to be spraying the whole house with automatic weapons fire. There were larger flashes which he was told were grenades being thrown in the house. Then the house blew up.

The man next to Castle laughed. "That was us. We booby trapped the place. It's burning like a son of a bitch. It'll be days before anyone figures out there aren't any bodies in the house and we'll be long gone."

Castle wondered where he'd be long gone to. Castle called to the leader. "Who are you? Who are they? What's going on here? Where are you taking us?"

"Sorry, sir. You'll have to get those answers from the civilians back on the boat."

Castle felt the LCU back up and then turn. He wasn't sure, but he though they were acting as a sub now and not as a tank, or something. Anyway, his goggles had gone dark.

Someone pulled out a thermos and everyone had coffee. For about a half an hour, they sat in silence until an amplified voice said, "Listen up. We're beginning the docking sequence. Hold on, people."

The sub seemed to slow down and possibly stop. Then there was a loud metallic clank and the little sub shook. Castle was sure they were being pulled downwards and then they came to a jarring stop.

"Docking completed. Now we just have to wait to evacuate the water and get tied down." Said the voice.

After a few minutes, a green light came on in the back of the sub and the troops gave an ironic cheer. Then the ramp came down. They saw what looked like sailors working on the vehicles.

A Navy officer stood at the end of the ramp. "Mr. and Mrs. Castle? Ms. Renoir? Over here, please."

Rick and the two women left the LCU first, the troops debarking after them. Castle looked around at the brightly lit space he was in and saw at least eight of the LCUs in some sort of a hanger.

"Sir, ma'am, I'm Lieutenant (jg) Hollis. Welcome to _USS Indiana_."

"And this is…what?" Kate demanded.

"A submarine, ma'am. The civilians will explain everything to you. Come with me please."

They followed Hollis through the very confined quarters of the submarine until they came to a door. Hollis knocked. "The Castles and Ms. Renoir are here, sirs."

The door opened and Rick and Kate saw a face they never thought to see again.

"Roy? Roy Montgomery?" Kate said in shock. "Is it really you?"

Montgomery laughed. "It would have to really be me, but I'm Ray Montgomery. Dr. Ray Montgomery, to be exact. This is my colleague, Dr. Phil Namura.

"Hi, glad to meet you. I guess you have a lot of questions. But so do we." Namura looked at Ray. "I can't believe it. Overlap isn't just a once in a million fluke."

As he spoke, there was a flash of blue light. "Damn! You're from Earth One! What the hell do you want now?" Castle cried out.

Ray Montgomery held his hands up. "We are from another Earth, but were not from what they like to call Earth One. We know about them, but they don't know about us. Which is fine. We'd like to keep it that way."

Namura kept looking at Rick oddly. "I just can't believe it."

"Believe what?" Rick shot back.

"Overlap. Right here in front of me."

Rick sighed. "And what the hell is overlap?"

Ray spoke up. "We have looked at a number of alternate Earths. On one we found that there had been a man named Sherlock Holmes who was a consulting detective and lived at 221B Baker Street in London. Oh, he wasn't exactly like the Sherlock Holmes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. His flatmate was Dr. James Watson, not John. The adventure with the huge dog took place at the estate of the Chelmsford family, not the Baskervilles, and a few other things. It was quite exciting. And then we found you. You're exactly like him."

"Him whom?" Castle asked, becoming more exasperated by the minute.

Namura pulled out a photo and handed it to Rick. "So? It's a photo of me."

Namura shook his head. "No, it's a photo of Derrick Storm."

Castle shook his head. "Derrick Storm is a fictional…." Castle stopped. He had an idea who that was. "But he's real someplace."

"This _is_ a photo of another Derrick Storm." Ray said, handing Rick another photo. This one was some sort of official portrait, Castle guessed. Storm was sitting facing the camera with the US flag behind him, his expression very stern. He was in uniform, but it was no uniform he'd ever seen. A black thigh length jacket and tan pants. Rick could see this Storm had a chest full of medals and some kind of shoulder boards, presumably showing his rank, although Castle had no idea what it was.

Ray tapped the photo. "This Derrick Storm is a colonel in the Security Service, the secret police."

"Secret police? What country?"

"The United States. At least one United States. We're at war with them."

Before Rick could ask another question, Namura broke in. "We really should just give them the briefing as planned, otherwise, we'll be all over the map, so to speak."

Ray nodded in agreement. "The briefing, then."

Namura turned on a computer. A map of the US came up as Namura spoke. "The United States. You can't see it in this view, but North America is wider than on your Earth. More so in the middle than the north and south. So, the US is about a hundred miles wider. That just means the Midwest States are wider." He tapped the northern border. "The border with Canada is the same." He tapped the southern border. "At the end of the Mexican War in 1848 some genius in Washington DC looked at a map and decided that the mouth of the Colorado River would one day be a great seaport and it should be American. So, the US ended up with what on your Earth is Baja California and a bit of the Mexican state of Sonora. That seaport never happened, of course. There are a few other differences, Catalina Island off of LA is about a third bigger than in your world, but nothing really major."

Namura put up another map. "The North American Customs Union. Canada, the US, Mexico and the island nations of the Caribbean. One vast market with well over half a billion people." Castle noticed that the countries of Central America were shown as just blank spaces, except for a dark green dot in Panama.

The map changed to Europe. "The European Union. Note that it extends all the way to Eastern Europe, including Belarus and Ukraine. Also the nations of the Caucus, Turkey and Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine in the Eastern Med." Castle noticed that Israel seemed to extend all the way to the Suez Canal in Egypt and that there were also green dots by the Canal and around what he thought must be Tunisia.

The map changed again. "The Asian Economic Sphere. Run by Japan, more or less. It includes Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Hainan Island, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand."

"What about the rest of the world?" Kate asked.

"The rest of the world doesn't count. It's all failed states. Russia…Well, Putin put together a corrupt system and surrounded himself with second rate people so he didn't have to worry about them overthrowing him. When he died, the system fell apart. China? The economy ran great for a while, but all the Communist party did was get in the way and provide opportunities for corruption. India? As time went on it became less and less a country and more a collection of separate and distinct races, religions, castes and ethnic groups. It finally fell apart. Brazil, too. As it stands, the US is still the only superpower. Oh, that's not to say that everything else is stone age barbarism. There are areas in Russia, around Sverdlovsk in the Urals and Volgograd and other places that have some functional industries. Manchuria has some, and parts of the Chinese coastal provinces. Some in Brazil and elsewhere. "

"Speaking of which, we'll tell you now about Derrick Storm. Ours and theirs." Ray broke in.

The map changed to a photo of Rick's dad, his mom, his teenaged self and a little girl. Namura went on. "Your dad, on our Earth, was CIA, but was badly injured and was taken out of the Special Activities Division and given a desk job. He hated it and soon resigned. A friend got him a job on a movie about a sniper. Technical consultant. That's where he met your mother, fell in love and got married. When he left the CIA, your dad took the name Michael Storm and his son was named Derrick. The daughter is Danielle Storm. To make a long story short, Derrick entered the CIA and was every bit as heroic and competent as your books made him out to be."

"The other Derrick Storm's story was much the same, except his father was more seriously injured. That Michael Storm became sullen and withdrawn, as well as addicted to painkillers. He made his son's life miserable. That Derrick entered the US Constabulary, the uniformed Federal police. When President Bracken was elected, he put together the Security Service and Derrick Storm rose rapidly. When Bracken was assassinated, Vice President Nolan took over. Nolan was a complete nonentity. An obscure Army general named Demming was appointed as the commander of the Washington Military District, all the military forces around DC. In six months Demming had been appointed the new Vice President and then Nolan resigned. Nolan died shortly after, leaving Demming in charge of the police state Bracken had built."

"Excuse me," Kate said, "but is that Tom Demming?"

"No, his name is David Demming." But the picture that came up on the computer screen was a match for the Tom Demming back in their New York.

"Colonel Storm was put in charge of the Security Service's Special Operations Division. Their job is to keep Demming in power and increase his power by any means necessary. And I do mean any means necessary, murder, kidnapping, torture….You name it and Storm has done it."

"The two Storms are each other's nemesis. They've been trying to kill each other for years."

"This is all very interesting, but why the hell am I here? Along with Kate and Simone?" Rick demanded sharply.

"Because our Derrick Storm has disappeared. Just vanished. We know that the other Storm didn't grab him. If he had their propaganda would have announced it to the world. But our Derrick Storm is missing. We want you to be Derrick Storm until we can find ours."

Rick shook his head. "Look, I'd love to help you, but I'm a writer and I help my wife with her police work. I'm certainly not a super spy."

"You won't have to be." Ray assured him. "All you have to do is be seen, give a few briefings, toss a few tidbits to the press. That sort of thing. You can do it." Ray smiled at him. "And Demming's men are pretty sure our Storm is gone. That's why they tried to kill you. To prevent us from getting you. But if Derrick Storm shows up again, they'll have to think long and hard about things. Maybe the guy they're seeing is some author named Castle, but maybe it's really Storm."

"There are a million Rick Castle's out there. Why me?"

"We haven't explored the other Earths that much. You're the only Rick Castle we've found that could pull this off. The only other one we found is an illiterate farmer in an England that never got out of the Dark Ages. Demmings's people found the same ancient device you did, and managed to reproduce it, much as we have and those on Earth One did. With one exception. Their device was damaged somehow. They can't get to an infinite number of Earths, just seventy one. Regrettably that includes your Earth and ours."

Rick glanced at Kate and saw her nod ever so slightly. "Okay, I'll do it. I can't have a bunch of thugs trying to kill me and anyone near me."

"We should tell you more about our United States." Namura said. "If we bothered with it, we'd have an unemployment rate of about seventy five percent."

"What?" Rick, Kate and Simone said at once.

"That's way more than in the Great Depression. You must have riots every day."

"Not a one." Namura said smiling. "Between computers and robots, our society only needs about five percent of the population to actually work. Of course, that five percent are the smartest, most imaginative, risk taking, problem solving part of society. Another twenty percent of the population works for the five percent as secretaries, cooks, bartenders, teachers, doctors, nurses and what not. A robot may be able to mix a perfect martini, but if you're one of the five per cent, you want your martini mixed by a human. It's a status thing."

"What the hell does everyone else do?" Castle asked.

"Our society produces enough goods and services to provide every one of the others with a nice middle class life style. What people do when they don't have to work is spend their time on their hobbies. There are any number of sports leagues: Baseball, soccer, bowling, ice dancing, curling, motor sports. Or the arts. People write books or screen plays. There are actors, directors, musicians, painters, sculptors, poets, singers, song writers."

Ray took over. "There are amateur archeologists, geologists, astronomers, any and all of the sciences. Some people even start businesses. I buy only home made donuts from a woman who lives near me."

"And then there's the police and the military."

"Yes, the military." Namura said.

"Is there something wrong with the military?" Castle asked.

"Not really. It's just that the five percent has an, um, low opinion of the other ninety five percent. Basically, they ignore them."

A map of the world came up on the computer. Castle saw little green dots all over. "When Brazil and Venezuela began to collapse, it brought down other countries. Refugees, soldiers, militias, gangsters, started fleeing to safer places, which collapsed under the strain of so many people. Many in Central America headed north, but the Mexicans stopped them. Violently in some cases. They turned south and eventually got to Panama. Their constant fighting closed down the Panama Canal. The US sent an infantry division to restore order. The Seventh Infantry Division is still there."

The map changed to the Mediterranean. "The EU is mostly interested in perfecting the welfare state, not in military activities. The Caliphate runs from what was Pakistan to Morocco. They've run out of people whose education covers something more than the Koran, but they can buy weapons from rogue Russians, Chinese and others. They attack Europe with ballistic missiles, aircraft, missile boats, subs and commando raids. The EU has anti-missile batteries, aircraft and even some ships in the Med, but mostly it's the US Sixth Fleet fighting there. And there is a US Army corps in both Tunisia and another along the Suez Canal. There are US troops all over the world. In fact the military is bigger than at any time since World War Two. But…"

"But?" Castle said. "I hate it when there's a but."

"The government, that is the five percent, have no interest in the military. So, the military has become self supporting. Transit fees for the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal go to the military. The US corps in Central Africa exports rare earths used in computers in the industrialized world. The US Navy taxes ships it protects in dangerous waters. And so on and so on."

"And the but is?" Castle had an idea, but wanted to hear it from Namura.

"The US is basically at war with the Caliphate. The Sixth Fleet launches near daily raids with manned aircraft, drones and missiles. They raid the coast with everything from SEAL teams to Marine battalions. And the Army and Air Force in North Africa are in combat daily. The same for forces in the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic near North Africa. And the politicians in DC don't care. As long as the military is self supporting and doesn't take any tax dollars, they don't care. The five percent are busy making fusion power plants more efficient or some damned thing. What do they care what some of the other ninety five percent do? Only the five percent are important, or so they think. And the military never thinks to ask Congress or the White House for any guidance, let alone orders. I'm not saying it's happening now, but I think one day the military will figure out just how much power they do have and we'll regret it."

"Okay, but what are we going to do now?"

"Oh, we're headed back to the task force. Now that we have you, I'm afraid the Navy has other things they need to do."

"Where?" Simone asked.

"Darwin."


	2. Chapter 2

I, Spy

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: Of course I don't own Castle! Do I? Rating: M, in spots. Time: The future. After season eight, but before children.

 **Author's note: This is a sequel to** ** _Alexis's in Wonderland_** **and** ** _Four of a Kind_** **. Once again our intrepid heroes find themselves going into alternate universes.**

 **Chapter Two. The Theory of Darwin.**

"Darwin?" Kate asked. Rick and Kate had been berthed in the Captain's cabin, which had a bed which was just barely big enough for two people, as long as those two people liked to be very closer together. Rick and Kate most certainly liked being close together.

"The biggest city in Australia's top end. The northern part. You now know as much as I know about Darwin."

"And we're going there because?"

"The task force is going there. According to Ray, we'll join up with them tomorrow and be transferred to the flagship. We'll be briefed further there. This is apparently all on a need to know basis, which usually means the people who need to know, don't know anything."

"That's not a comforting thought."

Rick slid his hand under his tee shirt which Kate had borrowed to wear as sleepwear. "I have a comforting thought."

To his surprise, she pushed his hand away. "Castle! What are you doing?"

"This is worse than I thought. You don't know what you obviously need to know. I'm getting ready to make love to you."

"No! You've seen how closely packed everyone on the sub is. Someone will hear us."

"Kate, this is a submarine. We're in a steel watertight compartment with a heavy steel door, or hatch thingy, between us and everyone else. No one is going to hear us."

"Suppose they do?"

"They won't. Kate, I just…."

She kissed him. "Good night, Rick. Sleep tight."

Rick decided that any further efforts on his part would be futile and went to sleep.

Much earlier than they were used to, the hatch opened an inch or so and a female voice called out. "Time to get up, sir and ma'am. If you start now you'll have time for breakfast before they transfer you to the flagship."

An hour later, Rick, Kate, Simone, Ray and Namura climbed to the top of the sub's sail and got a look at the task force. Rick could see an aircraft carrier and five or six other, smaller ships through the early morning fog.

"The fog should burn off in a couple of hours and you'll get a better look at the task force." Captain Winton said. "Meanwhile, the Admiral wants to see you, so they're sending over an Osprey to pick you up." He pointed to the carrier and as he did, an odd looking aircraft took off. It had wings that tilted through ninety degrees allowing it to take off and land like a helicopter, and fly like an airplane once aloft. The aircraft head straight for the _Indiana_ , then slowed down and hovered over the deck behind the sail. The five passengers had already gone to the deck and quickly boarded the aircraft through a rear ramp. Then they were in the air, headed for the carrier.

Landing, they were met by another Navy officer. "Welcome to _USS Saratoga_ , CVN 84. If you'll follow me, the Admiral wants to see all of you." They were led across a busy flight deck and into the carrier's island. From there, they ascended by elevator to what they were told was 'flag country."

After passing a Marine sentry they were ushered into a small office. There to greet them was a tall African-American man dressed in khakis. He held out his hand. "I'm Rear Admiral Jim Barnes, and I run the _Saratoga_ carrier strike group. I wanted to get a look at you. We don't often have to send a special ops sub into a recently discovered Earth and pick up people.

Both Montgomery and Namura hastened to assure the admiral that the mission had been necessary. This seemed to satisfy him as he smiled and nodded. "One thing was accurate. I was told that the two ladies were very beautiful, and I can see that they are. Why, they're almost as beautiful as my own wife."

Kate noted a family photo of the admiral and what she assumed was his wife and children on the wall. "You're too kind, sir. We're nowhere near as beautiful as your wife."

Barnes laughed. "And you're diplomatic, too." He noticed Simone was looking out at the carrier deck with interest. "Interested, Ms. Renoir?"

She nodded. "Yes. I've never seen a ship this large."

"The _Sara_ is over eleven hundred feet long and displaces about a hundred and fifteen thousand tons. She's nuclear powered and carries four fighter attack squadrons with a mix of F 35 strike fighters and F 51 drones , a squadron of EF 35 electronic warfare aircraft and EF 51 drones, a squadron of KF 51 aerial tanker drones, a squadron of E 5 early warning aircraft, a helicopter squadron, and the Osprey that brought you here. Altogether just over a hundred aircraft."

"And there are more ships out there as well." Simone said.

Barnes took a step towards her. "Dead ahead is a guided missile cruiser, _USS Chicago_. She handles all of the anti-air, anti-surface and anti-sub defenses so the carrier can do its job. There are also four destroyers and two frigates for escorts. You can't see it, but there's a nuclear attack sub out there and, of course, _Indiana_. And if you look off to the port, "Barnes gestured to the left, "you'll see a helicopter carrier, _USS Okinawa_. We normally wouldn't have one of those assigned to us, but our mission is unusual and requires it."

"I thought your mission was to get us." Kate said.

"I'm afraid we're here to rob the dead." Barnes said sadly.

"Pardon?" Castle said.

"This Earth had a nuclear war about three years ago. They used mostly airburst neutron bombs. The explosions are too high to damage any infrastructure or ships, but the radiation is deadly. We sent in a ballistic missile sub with reconnaissance satellites instead of warheads to take a look. We estimate well over ninety five percent of this Earth's population is dead. We found what appears to be an intact US Navy task force at Darwin, Australia. We're at war with Demming's America and can use all the help we can get. We're here to recover those ships. The _Okinawa_ is carrying a skeleton crew for the ships." Barnes went to his desk and returned with a sheaf of photos. "We sent a recon drone over yesterday. There's what looks very much like a _Hornet_ class carrier, like the _Sara_ , two smaller carriers, possibly ASW, um, anti-submarine ships and three _Halsey_ class destroyers, like our escorts and a replenishment ship. There are also what may be Royal Australian Navy ships there."

"That many dead?" Simone whispered.

Admiral Barnes just nodded. He faced Rick. "Oh, we let it be known that you're Derrick Storm, but your cover identity is Mr. and Mrs. Castle. That way you won't have to try to remember another name. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have work to do. Ensign Wentzel has been assigned to escort you around."

They shook hands with the admiral and left. Outside was a tall, stocky young lady who introduced herself as Ensign Susan Wentzel, from the ship's public information office. "Anything I can do for you?" She asked enthusiastically.

"Clothing!" Kate said. "I don't want to wear the same clothes all the time."

"I have just the thing for you three." Wentzel replied and in an hour, the three were fitted out with camouflaged fatigues. "Since you three are CIA, the admiral has ordered you to be treated as officers. If you'll follow me to the wardroom, it's about lunch time. Have you ever had sliders?"

Life on an aircraft carrier is very busy, but not if you're an author pretending to be a spy, a police captain or the owner of a restaurant in New Orleans. But while Rick and Kate watched this Earth's versions of the Star Wars saga interspersed with romcoms, Simone busied herself with learning all she could about this Earth and especially it's military. The time passed.

"They got to the carrier." Wentzel told them. "Not too many dead bodies. They figure the crew mostly went ashore for a huge, last party before they died of radiation poisoning. They haven't checked the other two smaller carriers or other ships. Would you three like to go see the carrier? I thought you might have a professional interest, Mr…..Castle." Wentzel added his last name slyly, letting him know that she knew who he really was. And of course, he wasn't who she thought he was.

Castle shrugged. "Sure. We've been cooped up watching movies. I'd like some fresh air. As long as we don't run into any dead bodies."

There was a continuous shuttle of helicopters and Ospreys form the task force to Darwin and back, so when the famous spy Derrick Storm, er, that is, Rick Castle and wife and friend wanted to go to Darwin, seats were quickly found.

As befitted his reputation, bogus as it was, Rick was met by Captain Bolzano who would be in charge of getting the abandoned ships ready for sea and then sailing them back to their new home.

From the worried look on Bolzano's face when they arrived, Rick guessed that he was not one of the ones let in on the secret of his identity. "Mr., um, Castle? How may I be of service?'

"Oh, we're just here to stretch our legs and get some fresh air. Please, just act like we're not even here."

"Would you like me to show you around the ship?" A female voice said. They turned around to see Ensign Wentzel just trotting over from a helicopter. "I managed to talk my way onto a bird headed this way."

Rick nodded. "Lead the way."

Wentzel had been paying attention to the reports coming back from the salvage crew. The carrier was in good shape considering that it had been abandoned for three years or so. "All of the aircraft are either on the hangar deck or up here on the flight deck. It looks like everyone didn't go partying ashore. Some stayed behind to put the ship in as good a shape as they could manage. The bodies have been removed and…."

Wentzel was interrupted by a commotion near the bow. Rick saw armed Marines running forward and started to follow them. Kate grabbed his arm. "We should stay here. We don't want to get into a gunfight without our guns." Rick smiled sheepishly and nodded.

In a few minutes Wentzel found out what it was all about. "They found survivors over on the replenishment ship. Marines and a bunch of Aussie civilians. One of them's coming to see the Captain now. Do you want to go see him? You're interrogation skills could come in handy."

No one seemed to object to the four of them walking over and standing by Captain Bolzano. In minutes a squad of Marines approached with a tired looking Marine in faded cammies in the middle. They stopped in front of Bolzano. "This is Gunnery Sergeant Hoff, sir."

Hoff saluted. "Gunnery Sergeant Michael Hoff reporting, sir. God, you're really Americans?" Then he began to cry.

Bolzano explained that they were Americans, just from a different US. He promised to take everyone back with the task force.

Hoff told his story. "We're from 3rd Recon battalion, sir. We were a hundred miles into the outback when the shit hit the fan. Too far away to get nuked. Everything went crazy. We had to fight our way back here. I'm the senior man. I've got sixteen Marines left, four Australian troops and a local cop and a bunch of civilians. A hundred and six all together. We holed up on the _Mt. Shasta_ because it has food, medicine, ammo," Hoff grinned. "We even got an auxiliary generator running. And we forage in the town and stay away from the damned bikies."

"Bikies?" Bolzano asked.

"Aussie slang for bikers. Outlaw bikers, sir. If you look to the south, past the two RAN frigates, there's a Malaysian frigate. Behind that is a big white building. That's a warehouse for the Australian military. There's maybe thirty bikies." Hoff stopped. "And the women."

"Women?"

"Yes, sir. The bikies were even farther out of Darwin than we were, but they raided a couple of towns and grabbed all the young women they could get, grabbed some trucks, loaded up with whatever they could steal and ended up here. They got a 76mm gun on the frigate working. They lobbed a couple of shells into the town to let us know they could shell us. We talk on the radio. They like to make us listen when they rape the women." Hoff cursed. "Shit, sir. I only got sixteen Marines."

As if on cue, they heard a flat crack and then an explosion some hundreds of yards away in the water. At the same time someone called, "Captain Bolzano, sir? We got an incoming radio message." A Marine came over with a backpack radio and squatted by Bolzano. Bolzano took the handset. "This is Captain Michael Bolzano, US Navy. Who am I talking to?"

"Hello, seppo. I'm Snake and I figure with everyone else dead, I'm the Prime Minister of Australia now. You've come to take ships in our harbor. If you're gonna do that, you need to pay us. Understand?"

"Suppose we don't want to pay?"

"Then we'll start putting rounds in your ships. Maybe some missiles. I reckon you have a lot of sailors but damned few combat troops. So, what are you willing to pay for _my_ ships?"

"Give me an hour to talk to my commander." Bolzano cut the connection. He looked at the officers and chief petty officers gathered around him. "I need a secure comm link to the task force ASAP."

Snake got his answer in less than an hour. Nearly sixty aircraft soared over the bay and started dropping bombs in the water some hundreds of yards from the frigate. Bolzano radioed Snake. "You fire one damned round at us, and I'll blow your ship to bits and the warehouse you're living off of. What I propose is a peace treaty. You don't bother us and we don't bother you. We get what we want and leave and you continue as you were. That offer is non-negotiable. Take it or we'll blow you to bits."

There was a pause, then. "Take your fuckin' ships, Yank."

"Sir, could I talk to you?" Castle said. "Privately?"

Bolzano nodded and led Castle to an unoccupied area of the flight deck.

"Are you seriously not even going to try to rescue those women?" Castle demanded.

"I'm not going to try, I'm going to rescue those women and kill Snake and his gang."

Castle was shocked for a moment, then laughed. "You're a very good actor, Captain."

Bolzano smiled back. "Damned right I am."

The SEALs from _Indiana_ set up three observation posts to keep an eye on the frigate. They reported that for the first couple of days, the bikies' security was tight. There were a number of alert looking sentries on the ship 24/7. But after that, security declined. Now there was one guard on duty and several SEALs said they could smell pot coming from the ship. There were five bikies at the warehouse and they appeared even less alert than those on the ship.

Bolzano decided to have the SEALs attack the ship and left the warehouse to the Marines. Kate was not at all happy when Rick got ready to go with the SEALs.

"Kate, I'm Derrick Storm, world class super hero. Everyone expects me to go. But the SEALs who picked us up know I'm not Derrick Storm, just Rick Castle, so I go with them and stay behind when they board the ship. When it's all over, they come back and tell everyone that I'm more dangerous than Samuel L. Jackson on crack. Everyone's happy."

"I'm not." Kate said. "I want a very long life with you."

"Me, too." Rick admitted. He got a kiss from Kate and a hug from Simone and headed off with the SEALs.

The frigate had been tied up to the dock when it arrived. The bikies probably didn't know enough about ships to get the engines started and move the ship without something going wrong, so there it stayed.

Castle could see only one sentry on the ship, standing by the ship's gangplank. He was smoking something and from how deeply he was inhaling Castle, and everyone else, was sure he was stoned.

Lieutenant Daly, the SEALs commander spoke briefly to the Marines at the warehouse, then to his team. Then, "Okay, snipers, let's do this."

The two snipers had bolt action sniper rifles that had been bored out to fire .45 ACP pistol cartridges. As the bullets were slower than the speed of sound, there would be no sharp crack of a sonic boom. The rifles were also equipped with what the ordnance CPO had called a "truly ginormous suppressor." The snipers nodded and took aim. Somehow they fired simultaneously. Castle could swear he only one brief thump. The sentry sprawled backwards, a bullet in his throat and in his head.

The SEALs took off running towards the ship and after a second's hesitation, Rick followed them. The point man stopped at the top of the gangplank. "Tripwire." He whispered. He bent over and pulled a knife. There was a soft ping and he ran on, followed by the rest of the SEALs.

"You shouldn't be here." A SEAL hissed to Rick.

"I just got caught up in the moment." He confessed.

"You should go…"

A door opened in front of Castle and light poured out onto the deck where he stood. There stood a man. He was big. Tattooed. Had a long scraggly beard and long hair. His eyes were very bloodshot. He carried a sawn off shotgun in his left hand. He stared at Castle for a second longer than Castle stared at him. Rick raised his carbine and fired a single shot into the man's chest. The bikie went sprawling backwards. Rick could hear firing all over the ship. There were single gunshots that he knew were the SEALs and bursts of automatic fire.

"You okay?" The SEAL next to him yelled over the sound of gunfire.

"Yeah. I should go." He turned and headed for the gangplank, but the SEAL grabbed him.

"Better you stay here with us."

For the first time Rick saw there were two other men with him. "Your first?" Asked one, gesturing to the corpse at their feet.

Rick nodded.

"You'll get over it." Someone said.

"Maybe." Said another voice.

"We're a blocking force." Said the first SEAL. "Some of 'em will head for the gangplank or try to jump to the dock. Stay between us and try not to get shot."

Rick was never sure afterwards how long the firefight lasted. But all of a sudden the deck was full of SEALs and naked young women. One of the women, Rick later learned she was a school teacher, kept softly repeating, "Please, no. Please, no." Over and over and over again.

Rick heard the SEAL commander, Daly, on the radio to someone. "Bikers are all dead. We have two wounded, but not badly. Two women were killed, but we got twenty three out, four wounded, one badly. Shot in the stomach. I need a dust off chopper to the dock for the wounded, then more to take the women back."

Daly listened on the radio for a minute. "Listen up. The Marines hit the warehouse. Five dead bikers, seven women all okay and no dead or wounded Marines. You did good, people. Now let's take care of these people."

Daly pulled Rick aside. "Why did you come along with us?"

Rick shrugged. "Sorry. I just got caught up in the moment. Shooting that guy ruined the element of surprise, I know. But I promise…"

Daly laughed. "There were three other SEALs standing beside you. If you hadn't shot, one of them would have. You gonna be okay?"

Castle nodded.

"Take a look at the women. Look at how those bastards treated them. He deserved what he got. All of them did. You did good, Mr. Storm." Castle decided that Daly meant he was now Derrick Storm, who really was more dangerous than Samuel L. Jackson on crack. Somehow he felt better and worse.

Kate hugged and kissed Rick for a good five minutes before she remembered she was furious at him for following the SEALs. "Are you crazy? Don't answer that! You could have been killed. You are _not_ super spy Derrick Storm and you should _not_ try to act like you are. What the hell was the matter with you?"

"I killed a man tonight. I never did that before." He said softly.

"Oh, god. I'm sorry Rick. Come on, Captain Bolzano found us quarters here on the carrier. We have a coffee maker. I'll make you some."

Kate held Rick and listened to him talk about what had happened and then they slipped into bed and drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, Wentzel briefed them on how things were going. "The carrier is in good shape, at least for getting it back home. It'll have to go into the yard for a while, but it's a hell of a lot faster and cheaper than building a new carrier. The two ASW carriers are ships we planned, but never built. But we'll take them back. We'll find a use for them. The destroyers are okay, but the two Aussie frigates are too badly damaged to repair. The Malaysian ship that Snake and Company were on is totally non-standard. We'd have to manufacture spare parts from scratch. It'll stay here. Oh, satellites found a boomer, missile sub in port in East Africa and carrier run aground off of Egypt. But that's not for us. We're headed home."

Well, not everyone was headed home.

"Mr. Castle?" Ray Montgomery said as the carrier headed out to sea to join the task force with its escorts. "Can we have a word?"

"Do I get to meet the press now?" Rick asked hopefully as he, Kate and Simone were ushered into Ray's office.

"We got lucky."

"You found our Derrick Storm and I can go home?" He said hopefully.

"Not that lucky, I'm afraid. But we got some good news from Hong Kong on Earth B4."

"Before what?"

Ray looked confused for a second. Them he chuckled. "I'm sorry. We don't use Earth One, Two, and Three like the others. We use an alphanumeric code. A is for Earths that are friendly ones we can trade with openly. B Earths are friendly, and we trade with them, but don't let them know we're from another Earth, C Earths are worlds that are not worth bothering with, low tech or sometimes uninhabited, and D Earths are enemy Earths. Demming's Earth and the worlds he's conquered."

"So what's happening in Hong Kong?"

"We intercepted a courier from Colonel Storm. A Mr. Conrad there has something Storm badly wants. He wouldn't tell Storm what it was, so Storm told him he'd have to wait for him to finish his current assignment in a month before he could get to Hong Kong. Don't you see? This is perfect. You can go to Hong Kong as Colonel Storm and get something he wants. We can set a trap for the other Storm.

"No way!" Kate said loudly.


	3. Chapter 3

I, Spy

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: Of course I don't own Castle! Do I? Rating: M, in spots. Time: The future. After season eight, but before children.

 **Author's note: This is a sequel to** ** _Alexis's in Wonderland_** **and** ** _Four of a Kind_** **. Once again our intrepid heroes find themselves going into alternate universes.**

 **Chapter Three. Nobody Was Kung Fu Fighting.**

Kate looked up at the C-130 landing on an airstrip just hacked out of the coral of a small island somewhere in the Pacific. "I hate this idea." She said.

"I'm not thrilled with it either." Simone said from the other side of Rick.

"That makes three of us." Rick conceded. "But we can't go back home and have commando squads from Demming trying to kill us all the time. I have to either find the good Derrick Storm, and if that doesn't work, we can at least try to get rid of the bad Derrick."

The C 130 rolled to a stop and the three walked towards it. A man in cammies hopped out of the back of the plane and gave Rick a semi salute, like he wasn't sure he deserved one. "Mr. Castle? Sergeant Moakler, loadmaster. You CIA people really have some weird requests. Where do you want your boat, sir?"

"It's on a trailer?" Rick asked.

"Yes, sir."

"Okay, there's a truck coming to haul it to the ocean. Just get it out and put it anywhere."

The C 130's ramp was lowered all the way, and by pushing from the inside and pulling from the outside, a forty five foot, racy looking cabin cruiser was hauled off the aircraft. The loadmaster handed Castle some papers to sign. "Just like you ordered, sir. It looks like something from the 1920's on the outside, but there are all sorts of goodies hidden inside." He handed Castle a manual. "This'll tell you all about it, sir. Is that all?"

Castle nodded. "That's it."

The Navy was already hauling the boat towards the ocean.

"The boat has no weapons." Simone said.

"I'll be getting off the boat. And I'll be carrying a Walther PPK."

"Suppose this Conrad figures out you're not Colonel Storm?"

"How? According to Storm's own reply to Conrad, Storm has no idea who he is. Conrad is going to have to prove his bona fides to me, not the other way around." Rick put an arm around Kate's shoulder. "I may not be Derrick Storm, but I created him. This Earth has no idea that there are other Earths out there. As far as they know, Colonel Storm is just a hired gun. The best hired gun there is, and a very dangerous hired gun. So that's how I'll play him. They can do things my way or else."

"You don't know this Earth." Kate said, frowning.

"It's a more peaceful Earth, sort of. There have been no world wars, and the European colonial empires are still intact. There being no world wars, the US never needed to become a super power. It's just a nice, big isolationist country. Russia had their revolution, but in 1922, not 1917. The Communists didn't win, and while they're pretty much a police state, they're nothing like what Stalin put together. In fact, the place is run by a collective leadership. Running things by committee, I'm surprised they ever get anything done. China? The Manchu Dynasty was overthrown in 1851, not 1911. After fifty years of fighting, the Cho Dynasty is now firmly in charge. China is peaceful, united, exhausted from wars, and while not happy with the way the world is run, they aren't about to challenge the status quo. They'd lose. And, Hong Kong is still a British Crown Colony, so I expect that it'll be nice and law abiding. Anything else?"

Kate rested her head on his shoulder. "I wish I was going with you."

"Me, too. But Colonel Storm doesn't have a wife or girlfriend. In fact, he's a lot like me before I met you."

"That bad?" Kate teased.

"Afraid so."

Once the boat, named the _Katie_ , was in the water, sailors from _Indiana_ went over it with a fine toothed comb to make sure it functioned properly. Once they were convinced that everything worked properly, the boat was taken to _Indiana_ and with great care, placed into the well deck usually reserved for LCUs. Then with Rick, Kate, Simone, Ray and Namura aboard, they headed for the Hong Kong of Earth B4.

 _Indiana_ surfaced at night some fifty miles from Hong Kong. Montgomery and Namura had assured

everyone that the local level of technology was about that of the 1920s, which meant that radar had not been invented. However, there would be numerous small fishing boats from Hong Kong and the mainland out at sea. _Indiana_ would have to surface quickly, offload _Katie_ and then stay submerged unless there was an emergency.

Soon, Rick was on his way to Hong Kong, guided by a tiny GPS system disguised as the base of a commercial radio set. The sun rose just as he entered the harbor and he headed for the dock in Kowloon that Conrad had asked him to use. He found a slip and tied his boat up. When he was done, he saw he was being watched by five tough looking Chinese.

"Colonel Storm?" One said with an accent straight out of Oxford University.

"Yes."

He bowed. "I am Mr. Chen. We are from the White Lotus Society. Mr. Conrad has asked us to make sure nothing happens to your fine boat." He opened his jacket to show an automatic pistol. His friends opened their jackets. Everyone was armed, including a fellow with what appeared to be a Thompson submachine gun.

Castle smiled and nodded. "Good. I'd have to have the paint of my boat scratched."

Chen examined the boat. "Who is Katie that you should name your boat after her?"

Rick laughed. "I don't know. You'll have to ask the last owner of the boat. If you can find him."

Chen nodded. "There is a car at the end of the dock to take you to Mr. Conrad."

A boxy looking car was at the end of the dock and Castle got in beside the driver.

"Sir, you should sit in back." The driver said, somewhat scandalized.

"Sorry. I like to keep my eyes on things. And people."

"As you wish, sir." The driver sniffed.

They didn't go far before the driver pulled up in front of a neat and tidy storefront.

"Mr. Conrad is inside, sir."

"Park somewhere. I will want a ride back to my boat."

"Very good, sir. Mr. Conrad had already anticipated that."

Castle walked in the front door, noticing a small sign that read, "J. Conrad, Import and Export, Ltd."

When he entered he found a well dressed Chinese man sitting behind a desk. "May I help you, sir?"

"Mr. Conrad is expecting me."

The man stood. "Of course, sir. This way please."

Castle was led into the back, which turned out to be a small warehouse about half filled with boxes and bales. Conrad, the only Caucasian, was a tall, thin and reasonably well dressed man who appeared to be in his early fifties. His coal black hair led Castle to believe he dyed it. The other three men were Chinese and from the bulges under their jackets, he suspected they were more members of the White Lotus Society.

"Mr. Storm. I'm Joseph Conrad, your servant, sir. How are you?" He held out his hand, which Castle shook.

"I'm fine. And very interested in what you have that I might wish from you. You've taken up a good deal of my valuable time."

Conrad smiled. "I assure you that your journey hasn't been wasted, sir." He turned to one of the Chinese. "Kang, please unwrap the package."

Kang walked over to a bed and pulled the blanket off. Underneath was a naked woman. Her hair was matted and filthy and her body was covered with scrapes, bruises and sores. She was so thin that he could easily count her ribs. Her hands were behind her back and he suspected she was handcuffed. She blinked as if unused to the light. Then she got to her feet and limped towards Castle. She tried to kick him, but he was able to block the kick easily. She fell back on her ass.

"Bastard." She moaned.

As she looked up at him, Castle saw that this woman was another Kate Beckett. _I have to be very, very careful._ He thought, then turned to face Conrad. "And why would I be at all interested in this appalling creature?"

"Certainly, even with her…Um, current state, you recognize her, sir? Tatiana Beckov. She came here looking for our help to kill you. But we felt you'd make us a better offer. In the meantime we've had fun with her. We assumed you wouldn't mind."

Castle did his best to look confused. "Tatiana Beckov? The name isn't familiar, I'm afraid."

"Really, sir? Major Tatiana of the Russian KGB? You seduced her, got her to betray her country and then dropped her."

Castle slowly shook his head. "I'm afraid you're mistaken. I would never dream of mounting an operation against my friends in the KGB."

Conrad became angry. "What are you trying to pull here? Everyone knows that…"Conrad stopped and then smiled. "Oh, sir. You are the consummate professional. Plausible deniability to the end. I quite understand, sir. That being the case, you wouldn't mind if we slit her throat here and now, would you?"

Castle smiled. "Far be it from me to tell you how to run your own business." Then he became serious. "A major in the KGB, you say? What Directorate?"

"The Seventh." Conrad said happily.

"Internal Security for the KGB? The ones that watch he watchers? She could be useful to me."

Conrad shook his head. "Considering how she feels about you, sir, I doubt she'd be of much use to you. Seeing as how she'll be trying to kill you and all."

Castle grinned. "Are you doubting my methods?"

Conrad thought and slowly nodded. "It does seem awfully difficult, sir."

Castle laughed. "In six months she'll not only be my mistress, she'll be my prize assistant."

"Really, sir?" Conrad said with a grin.

"Mistress?" Tatiana croaked from the floor. "Give me a chance and I'll rip your balls off, gouge your eyes out and then piss on your face."

"I've always liked a challenge. How much were you planning on asking for her?"

Conrad licked his lips. "Ten thousand pounds, sir."

"Done. But there's one condition. A wager of ten thousand pounds. If in six months she is my mistress and my assistant, I win back my ten thousand. Otherwise, you double your money. What could be fairer than that?"

Conrad though for a moment and then shook his head. "I've incurred expenses, sir. And I need to recoup them. You pay me twenty thousand pounds and then the wager is for ten."

"She walks in here, your grab her, have fun with her and then send me a message? Even if you paid for the beer your men, frankly I doubt that you had expenses exceeding five hundred pounds."

After fifteen minutes, Conrad had come down to seventeen thousand pounds and Castle had gone up to twelve thousand. He'd eventually agree to a deal with Conrad and then get Kate/Tatiana the hell out of Hong Kong.

Suddenly, Conrad looked suspicious. "I'm reminded of something she said, sir."

"And it's going to make her more valuable to me, no doubt?" Castle replied cynically.

"It might. When she first talked to me, she said that she had thought that you actually had feelings for her. She said that she had thought that there were some things that couldn't be faked."

"I've never tried to fake _everything_ , so I couldn't say."

"But if you do have feelings for the woman, she would be very valuable to you, would she not?"

"You do know who I am and what my reputation is?"

Conrad grinned. "A proposition, sir. Beat the woman up, force her to have sex with you, and I'll accept your offer. Twelve thousand for the woman and the wager is ten thousand. What could be fairer, for you?"

Castle thought quickly. If Conrad actually thought he had feelings for Kate/Tatiana, after what he and his men had done to her, he'd expect Storm to kill them all. His only option would be to try to kill Storm first. Then he'd kill Tatiana. He shrugged. "Acceptable. However, I will need a condom."

"Of course, sir." Conrad went to his desk, took out a foil wrapped package and handed it to Castle.

Castle knew better than to try to pull his punches with this group of thugs watching. They'd pick up on it in a flash. _Shit. Tatiana's going to hate me for this, and so will Kate and Simone. I'll hate myself as well._

He pulled Tatiana up off the floor and hit her hard in the pit of the stomach. She bent over and retched. Having nothing in her stomach, she only vomited bile. Castle slapped her head hard, then stood her up and slammed his fist into her solar plexus, knocking the wind out of her. As she gasped for breath, he threw her on the bed.

He pulled his pants down and worked at getting himself an erection. _Please let me get hard, even though I hate this. Please._

To his relief, and private embarrassment, he did get hard and rolled the condom on. She was dry and tight and he could hardly enter her. Her breath back, she tried kicking at him.

"Really? I am trying to save your life, you know. You might want to be more cooperative."

She spat in his face. "I hate you and I'd rather be dead." She tried to bite his face.

Castle pushed her face to one side and continued with her. Happily for him, he came after a few minutes. "You'll be much more willing in six months." He said, getting up off the bed and pulling his pants on.

"One of us will be dead in six months." Was her reply.

"My twelve thousand, please?" Conrad held his hand out.

Castle pulled up his shirt to reveal a money belt. He began extracting one hundred pound notes and handing them to Conrad. "I will need some clothes for her. I can hardly take her back to my boat like that."

"I'm afraid the clothing she had was…damaged. But we'll find something." He sent one of his men back into the warehouse. He returned with some cloth. A large rectangle of cloth was wrapped around Tatiana's waist and tied off on the side as a skirt. Another length of cloth was used as a sash. A thin piece of silk was put over her shoulders and tied of in front. The cloth was thin enough that Castle could see her nipples.

The whole time, Tatiana stood there glaring at him.

"It's been…interesting doing business with you." Conrad said, holding out his hand.

"Likewise." Rick replied.

With her hands still cuffed behind her, Rick guided Tatiana back to the car. When he opened the back door for her, she jumped in, slid across the seat and tried to open the other door. It was locked. When Rick got in, she swiveled and began kicking at him. Luckily, she was so weak from hunger and abuse, he easily grabbed her ankles and put them on his lap, holding them there.

Shortly, they were back at his boat. The members of the White Lotus Society were still there.

"Your boat remains in excellent shape, sir." Mr. Chen said.

"Of course it is." Rick took out his wallet and handed a twenty pound note to Mr. Chen. "Thank you, sir. Can we be of further service? Do you need fuel? Supplies? Maps?"

Rick shook his head. "I'm meeting some people at the Pratas Islands, south of Formosa. I'll be fine."

Chen smiled and bowed. "Have a very good journey, sir."

Once aboard, Rick took Tatiana to the small bridge and handcuffed her to a grab bar. Then he piloted the boat out of the crowded waters of Victoria Harbor and out into the South China Sea. He set a course for his rendezvous point with _Indiana._ He set the autopilot which, with the help of his GPS and radar would keep him on course and out of the way of any ships.

He undid Tatiana's cuffs. "Come with me. We're going below."

"Can't wait, can you? Bastard. Are you going to beat me up again, like a big brave man?"

"I apologize for what I did back there. What I did, I did to keep both of us alive. In fact, I'm not Derrick Storm. My name is Rick Castle."

She laughed. "How stupid do you think I am? You beat and raped me to save money and because you enjoyed it. I will do nothing to give you any pleasure. Everything you get from me you'll get because you're stronger than I am. But one day the tables will be turned, I promise you."

He cuffed her hands behind her back and took her below to the boat's head.

"The bathroom? You're kinkier than I thought. But it'll do you no good."

"I'm giving you a shampoo and cleaning you up a bit."

"Of course. How unpleasant for you to have to put up with me in this state." She said sarcastically.

Rick shampooed her hair, then combed the snarls out of it. All of those years doing this with Alexis came in handy. Then he dried her hair with a towel. Her hair, once clean was a reddish brown, a bit redder than Kate's hair when he first met her and a bit longer than when he'd foolishly taken Gina to the Hamptons. Next he washed her face. "I'd let you wash the rest of you off but I'd have to leave you alone in here and uncuffed."

She smiled coldly. "Oh, please let me do that."

Cuffing her again, he took her to the small cabin. He found the small medical kit he had and cleaned up the scrapes and cuts on her face and neck. "There. We'll have a doctor look at you later."

"Is your ego so out of control that you think that what you're doing is going to make me want to fuck you and help you?"

"Look. I'm really not Derrick Storm. My name is really Rick Castle. I can see why you'd mistake him for me, but I'm not the guy who seduced you, got you to betray your country and dumped you."

"No, you're just the guy who beat me up and raped me. How stupid do you think I am?"

Rick made no reply, but left her handcuffed to the arm of a built in couch while he made something to eat. He brought her a bowl of clam chowder and a ham and cheese sandwich. "Here. You must be starved."

"What's in that?" She said suspiciously.

"The soup is clams, potatoes, and milk and other stuff. I can check the can if you…."

"No! What did you put in it?"

"Nothing." Rick shook his head. "Look, if you're so afraid I'm going to poison you or something, remember you're handcuffed. I could kill you any number of ways. And, if you're going to kill me, you really have to build up your strength."

He held out a spoonful of soup, and after a second, Tatiana opened her mouth. He managed to get her fed without being bitten, although she did try twice.

"Okay, bedtime for you." He took her to the tiny bedroom and cuffed her to the headboard. She at once crossed her ankles and glared at him. "If you need anything, I'll be topside."

"When you come back for me, I'll still kill you if I can."

 _And I thought the first couple of cases with Beckett were bad._ He thought.

He sat on the bridge and dozed until he got a radio message. " _Katie_ , are you out there? It's the _Big I_."

 _Indiana_ was trying to sound like just another ship and not a sub that had no business existing on this Earth.

"Howdy, _Big I_. This is _Katie_. What's up?"

"We got all kinds of small craft around us. We're moving about thirty miles due east to a clear spot. Just stay on your present course and we'll find you."

"Roger that. And I have a passenger. Another Kate Beckett, but she hates me. I'll explain later."

"See you, _Katie_."

Castle checked his course and dozed some more. The sun was just coming up when he decided he was close enough to the rendezvous point to get Tatiana up. He found he fast asleep, but with her wrists rubbed raw from trying to get out of the cuffs. "Dammit, Tatiana. Why did have to do that?"

She just spat at him.

He uncuffed her from the bed and hauled her topside. He briefly took off her cuffs and put a life jacket on her, then put the cuffs back on.

"Are you going to throw me overboard? Make sure I suffer a long time?"

"No. A ship is coming for us."

"I see no ship."

Just as she said that, Castle saw the _Indiana's_ periscope break the surface. Less than a minute later, the sub surfaced.

"What the hell is that?" Tatiana asked, awed in spite of herself.

"A submarine. _USS Indiana._

Tatiana shook her head slowly. "It can't be. No one has a submarine that big. Certainly not the Americans. We'd know if someone built something that big."

"She's some 570 feet long and displaces about seventeen thousand tons on the surface and close to nineteen thousand tons submerged."

"That's impossible! Only battleships are bigger than that."

Rick put his hands on her shoulders. "But there she is. Something completely impossible in your world, but not in mine. And if you can see one impossible thing, maybe there are more? Such as my name being Rick Castle and not Derrick Storm."

"It's impossible….but it's there." She whispered.

"I'm going to take your cuffs off. Getting from a small boat to the deck of a sub isn't easy. And my wife will kill me if I let anything else happen to you."

"You have a wife? She must be very desperate."

"Actually, she's a lot like you."

Tatiana snorted in derision, but when he took her cuffs off, she made no move to attack him.

A line was passed to _Katie_ and Tatiana and then Rick were hauled across. Tatiana looked at the sub as if expecting it would be made of plastic or something. They went aboard the sub and the deck hatch was just about to close when they heard an explosion.

"Sir, your boat just blew up."


	4. Chapter 4

_**I, Spy**_

 _ **By**_

 _ **UCSBdad**_

Disclaimer: I don't own Castle. Do I? Rating: M, in spots. Time: After Season eight, before kids.

 **Chapter Four. The Manchu Choo Choo.**

"What?" Castle yelled. He tried to go back up the ladder, but was pushed aside by a half a dozen sailors. "Sorry, sir." One said as he went by. "We're trained for this."

When Rick reached the deck he saw that _Katie_ was burning and starting to sink. Seeing Tatiana beside him, he turned on her. "Did you do this?" He demanded angrily.

"I was handcuffed to your bed last night, remember? And where would I have hid a bomb? You saw me totally naked."

"I really need to know more about this." Kate said, coming onto the deck. "Really, you saw her naked and you handcuffed her to the bed? Kinky."

"It was not kinky!" Rick insisted.

Captain Daly leaned down from the sail of the sub. "Everyone below. Ships will see that plume of smoke for miles and come looking. We need to submerge."

No sooner was the hatch closed than Tatiana turned to Kate. "Who the hell are you?"

"Kate Castle. That's my husband." She pointed to Rick.

"He had surgery done on you to make you look like me?"

"We need to take this somewhere private and brief…." Ray Montgomery interrupted.

"Tatiana Beckov." Rick supplied.

"Everyone come with us."

Once in Montgomery and Namura's office, the existence of multiple worlds was explained to Tatiana, who didn't quite believe it. She became more confused when Simone came in. "Another me? But not quite?"

"No, I was born on yet another Earth as Kathleen Beckett. When I came with Rick and Kate to their Earth, I needed a new identity and a slightly different face. They're somewhat famous and an exact duplicate of Kate would attract unwanted attention."

Tatiana shook her head. "There are two of me? I don't believe it. You can't be…."

"I think I can prove we're exactly alike." Kate said. Gathering some paper and stamp pad ink, she took her own fingerprints, and those of Tatiana and Simone. She handed Tatiana a magnifying glass. "Check the fingerprints. You know that no two are alike. But all of our prints are alike. Satisfied?"

Tatiana nodded and slumped into a chair. "It's impossible, but it's true." She muttered.

Kate turned to Rick. "Now, I need to hear about you seeing Tatiana nude and why you handcuffed her to the bed last night. This had better be good."

"You're going to hate me, Kate." Rick explained in as much detail as he could his meeting with Conrad and what happened with Tatiana.

To his surprise, Tatiana came to his defense. "When I saw him there in Conrad's I was sure it was Colonel Derrick Storm. I assumed when he beat me up and…forced me to have sex with him that he was just being a bully and a swine. I would have tried to kill him if I could have. But now, after all of this, "She gestured around at the sub, "I'm convinced he's Richard Castle and that what he did was to save my life. He couldn't have done anything else and kept me alive. Please don't be too angry with him."

Kate glared at Rick. "Do you still have these handcuffs?"

"No. They were on the boat."

"Luckily, I still have mine."

"You mean I'm forgiven?" He said, smiling.

"Not yet. Maybe not tonight. Maybe not tomorrow night. We'll see."

"What's going to happen to me?" Tatiana asked. "I can't go back to Hong Kong."

"I'm rich." Rick said. "I'm a best selling author back home. We can find you an Earth where you'll be safe and give you enough money for a start."

"That's what they did for me." Simone said. "And now I own the best restaurant in Nawlins."

"I'm curious." Kate said. "How did you end up with your name?"

Tatiana shrugged. "My parents were Irish Revolutionary Socialists named Beckett. They got jobs in England with the Royal Navy in London and spied for Russia. But their handler defected, and they barely got back to Russia alive. They changed the family name to Beckov as it sounded more Russian. They considered calling me Ekaterina, but they liked Tatiana better because there was a Russian Empress named Ekaterina. I followed in their footsteps and entered the KGB. You know the rest."

Kate took Tatiana by the arm. "You men will have to leave. Simone and I have to get Tatiana cleaned up, fed again, dressed in something better than this, and I need to find a female corpsman to check her out."

The next morning they entered Victoria Harbor, but on a different Earth. This was an A class Earth where they could appear normally. Tatiana stood and watched an entirely different Hong Kong unfold as the sub entered the harbor. "It's unbelievable, but so much of this is. The land is the same, but the buildings are huge, and the ships…."She pointed to a group of container ships being unloaded that were far larger than any merchant ships in her world.

Captain Daly pointed to the far end of the harbor. "The _Yorktown_ carrier battle group is in port for some R &R. We'll be sending you there so you can be checked over by their medical staff, Ms. Beckov. After that, Mr. Montgomery has advised me that you'll be staying ashore. Is that right?"

Tatiana nodded. "I'm not sure what will happen to me after that, however."

"Don't worry, Tatiana. We'll take care of you." Kate said, giving her shoulder a squeeze.

As Rick was waiting for the boat that would take them to the carrier, he was approached by a young sailor. "Excuse me, Mr. Storm, sir."

Castle gave him a cold look. "Who?"

The man gave him a confused look, and then looked embarrassed. "I'm sorry. I mean Mr. Castle, sir. I don't know where that came from. Your name is Castle."

Rick just nodded.

"Sir, can I ask you a question? Scuttlebutt says you killed six triad gangsters when you rescued Ms. Beckov. Is that right?"

Castle had no desire for anyone to ever know what had happened, but he knew enough to stay in character. "You should know that I can't discuss any details of an operation don't you?" But as he spoke, he raised his left hand to his chest, clearly showing five fingers.

The sailor looked disappointed, then noticed Castle's five fingers and smiled. "You sure are lucky, sir. Having those three women."

"Mrs. Castle actually is my wife and Ms. Renoir is a long time friend. I just met Ms. Beckov. And my wife would kill me if I ever fooled around on her."

"Still, you're awfully lucky, sir."

Castle chuckled. "I certainly am." Considering what he'd done with Tatiana, he felt lucky to still be alive.

If the submarine had impressed Tatiana, the aircraft carrier knocked her socks off. A medical corpsman met them when the boat arrived at the carrier and told her how large the ship was, how fast, and how many aircraft she had, and what they could do.

"How can anyone stand against you?" Tatiana asked.

The corpsman chuckled. "We have to keep things cool back on our Earth, but our Navy is still a lot bigger and better than the one from Demming's Earth. Now our army isn't as big, because we take only volunteers, while Demming conscripts his soldiers. I'd still say our army is better, though."

"The Russians have a saying." Tatiana said. "Quantity has a quality all its own."

Tatiana was fussed over by several doctors who, in the end, found that she was in surprisingly good shape considering her ordeal. She was given antibiotic shots, had all of her cuts and scrapes attended o and was given several bottles of vitamins before being sent on her way.

Their next stop was the Peninsula Hotel where Rick and Kate had a suite as did Simone and Tatiana. As soon as they were checked in, Kate confronted Ray Montgomery. "We need clothing and we need it right now. Poor Tatiana only has her cammies to wear and we have those and the clothes we came with. You and whoever you work for are funding a shopping expedition for us and for Rick as well. Montgomery knew better than to argue and the three ladies were soon off in a taxi with a platinum credit card, something that Tatiana had never seen before. "Oh, you're going to love credit cards." Simone said happily. "Especially someone else's card."

In the meantime, Ray directed Rick to a local tailor where he could buy some ready made clothes as well as have some bespoke suits and shirts made up. Handily enough, a shoemaker was located next door.

Rick sat in the bar and checked his watch for the hundredth time and slowly sipped his Scotch. His wife and their friends had been gone for hours and he was starting to get worried. Could Colonel Storm or some other of Demming's thugs have tracked them here? Just as he was about to ask Montgomery to call the cops, he saw a sea of packages moving towards him with three extremely well dressed ladies in the center. They wore identical little black dresses with identical pearl necklaces and had pretty obviously been to a beauty salon. Their hair was pulled back tightly and I was darker than their hair had been when last he saw them. Their makeup had reduced the differences between Simone and Kate and Tatiana. They all looked very much the same.

"I don't know which one to kiss." Rick said as they stopped by his table.

"You have a one in three chance of being right. Give it your best shot." One said.

Rick stood and kissed he woman on the left. "How did you know?" Kate asked after breaking the kiss.

"Even with the makeup, Simone still isn't you and Tatiana looks a little nervous. And I could pick my wife out of a million Kate Becketts."

Simone laughed and Tatiana blushed.

Rick checked his watch. "If we go now we can eat dinner before the kitchen closes."

Kate sent their purchases to their suites and they headed for the dining room. "So you're all going with the same hair color?" Rick asked.

"It's just a rinse. We'll wash it out in a couple of days. I wouldn't want you fooling around with the wrong Kate Beckett, would I?"

Just as they were finishing their desserts, Ray Montgomery and Phil Namura came in and sat down. "We found out why someone tried to kill you in the other Hong Kong."

Rick looked up from his ice cream. "I assumed Conrad didn't want to lose the bet we had."

"No, Conrad is dead. And from the fact that his bodyguards all survived with no injuries, it must have been the White Lotus Society that killed him."

"Why?"

"I'll need to give you some background. When the Manchu Dynasty in China was overthrown there in 1851, what was left of the dynasty retreated back to Manchuria where they originated from back in 1644. It took the Chinese Cho Dynasty some fifty years to, more or less, solidify its hold on power. By then, Manchuria was too well armed to overwhelm, and China was exhausted by fifty years of civil wars. So Manchuria remains independent. Manchuria includes what we consider Manchuria, plus a bit of northern China, pretty much all of Mongolia and Sinkiang."

Namura took up the tale. "Manchuria is between China, Russia to the north and Japan to the east. Plus all of the European colonial powers. So, the Manchurians made a virtue of necessity. The Russians have built a railroad from the Manchurian capital, Mukden, to Vladivostok. The Japanese built one from Mukden to the port of Pusan in Japanese occupied Korea. The British Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank as well as the French Bank of Indo-Suez operate in Manchuria. Germany has a military mission training the Manchurian army. Chinese trading companies are all over Manchuria. All of the powers that might want to take over Manchuria are there in one way or another."

Rick nodded. "So if one country tries to take over Manchuria, all of the others will stop them."

"Exactly."

"So why does the White Lotus Society want me, or Conrad, dead?"

"The White Lotus is very close to the Regent of Manchuria, Admiral Gi."

Tatania laughed. "An admiral in a landlocked country. But he's a smart, tough bastard. Ruthless, too. He must want Storm dead pretty badly if they risked trying to kill him in British Hong Kong."

"An admiral with no fleet?" Kate asked.

"His Manchurian family remained loyal to the Chinese after the Cho Dynasty took over. Gi entered the Chinese Navy and rose quickly. Bu he was a Manchurian and court politics did him in. He was arrested on a trumped up charge of treason, escaped and went to Manchuria. They welcomed him and before you knew it, he was a power there. When the old Manchurian Emperor Pi died, his son was only two. Gi was made the head of the regency council ruling in the little tot's name and before you knew it, he was in charge."

Namura nodded. "Storm is involved in some sort of mining company operating in Mongolia. If Storm's involved, it can't be just a regular mining company. But the mining company is owned by some very powerful British and American interests, and they have both French and German junior partners, so Gi can't just kick the company out of Mongolia without upsetting some very powerful people."

"General Li Chun is the Viceroy of Mongolia and appears to be loyal to Admiral Gi."

"Oh, don't worry about Li Chun." Tatiana said. "The power behind the throne are two Russians. There's Alexander Samsonov who commands Li Chun's guard regiments and Baron von Ungern-Sternberg who heads the secret police. In spite of the name, he's a Russian whose family immigrated to Russia generations ago." Samsonov is damned good and the Baron is a sadistic bastard, but he gets the job done. I was never so happy as when I finally saw the last of him."

"You know the Baron?"

"And Samsonov. They're loyal to Admiral Gi, but still have some affection for Russia."

Montgomery and Namura exchanged glances. "Would you be willing to do some work for us?"

"What kind of work?" Tatiana asked, suspiciously.

"Go to Mongolia and look around. Since it's known you've defected from the KGB, you'll be looking for another job. And if you had…" Montgomery looked at Rick.

"No!" Kate said sharply. "Absolutely not. Rick is not going to Mongolia. And Tatiana doesn't need to go either. This isn't her fight. "

A month later Kate and Rick stood on the deck of _Indiana_ as Rick and Tatiana got ready to board a junk to go into Pusan where they'd take a train to Mukden and then on to Mongolia.

"I hate this." Rick said.

"I know you do. I hate it too, but we can't spend our lives running from more damned killers. Just don't save Tatiana's life again, okay."

Rick grinned. "She's on her own this time."

Kate punched him lightly on the arm. "Liar. You're in love with her, just like you're in love with every Kate Beckett out there."

"But you're my wife. I started falling in love with you the day we met and I've been falling more in love with you each day since then." They shared a long, deep kiss.

As Rick was ferried to the junk, Tatiana approached Kate. "When Rick and I…You know, made love, I could see he hated doing it. I thought it was because I was filthy, beat up and I stank. But I know now he hated what he was doing to me. He'll be okay. Nothing will happen."

She hugged Tatiana. "I know. I know Rick, and oddly enough, I know you pretty well. Be careful. I'd hate to lose another me."

Rick stood in front of the train that would take them from Pusan to Mukden. "It's not what I expected."

Tatiana laughed. "What did you expect a high ranking general to have?"

"I didn't expect an armored train."

Tatiana pointed at the front of the train. "First is an artillery car. It has turreted 76 millimeter guns at each end and a 57 millimeter gun and two heavy machine guns on each side. Next comes the infantry car. It carries about fifty soldiers and has three machine guns to a side. Next is the engine and tender. Placed there so if the first two cars are derailed, the train can back up. Next are two passenger cars for General Li and his staff and then a baggage car. Then two more infantry cars and last is another artillery car, just like the one in front. What do you think?"

Rick frowned. "I think I'd be happier if I was going someplace that didn't need this much firepower to get to."

"Come on." She said, putting her arm through his and approaching a guard. She spoke to the guard, who looked like some sort of Cossack, in Russian. He nodded and pointed to the first passenger car. They climbed aboard and, finding the door locked, Rick knocked. The door was opened by a beautiful Asian woman in a heavily embroidered cheongsam. "Tatiana. How good to see you again. The general is expecting you and your friend." She smiled and gave Rick an appraising glance. "I hope to see more of you." She said, looking directly at Rick. She gestured to another door. "Go right on in."

One thing that Rick noticed right away once inside was that he and Tatiana were the only ones with any clothes on.

About a third of the car was taken up with a large hot tub. In the tub was a barrel chested, shaven headed man, presumably General Li and four naked women. Rick's heart stopped when he saw that the woman on Li's lap was a pale, slender redhead with very long hair. _Please don't let this Earth's Alexis be some warlord's sex toy._ He thought. Then the girl turned look at them and he relaxed. It wasn't Alexis.

"Tatiana Johannayevna!" The general roared. "You are here at last. Come, join us." His eyes moved to Castle. "And you friend, of course."

Tatiana put her arms around Rick. "This is my fiancé, Rick Castle."

General Li looked hard at Rick. "So, his name is Rick Castle, is it? I must remember that name."

It was obvious to Rick that he'd been made as Colonel Storm, incorrectly, but made none the less.

"Well, what are you two waiting for?" The general laughed.

Castle took a quick look around. There were at least a dozen other couples sprawled on couches, all nude and all making out.

"Well, what are we waiting for, lover?" Tatiana said, turning around. "Undo the buttons on my dress?" Rick undid the buttons and Tatiana's dress dropped to the floor. "Now my bra?" Rick undid the bra, but Tatiana made no move to take it off. "It seems to be stuck. A little help?" Rick pushed her bra off and ran his hands tentatively over her boobs. Tatiana turned around. "I need help unhooking my stockings from my garter belt. Please?" She put her foot up on a chair occupied by two women who were making love. They didn't seem to notice. Rick unhooked first one stocking, then the other. "Could you be a dear and pull them down? Do do it slowly, so they don't get damaged. Rick ran his hands down her thighs and her calves. Tatiana wiggled her ass. "Push my panties down, okay?" Rick put his thumbs under the elastic and pulled them down.

Tatiana gasped. "Oh dear! You're still fully dressed. How silly of me! Let me help you."

Rick did his best to smile. "Let me help you help me."

Rick was soon as naked as Tatiana and they got into the tub with the general. The general was otherwise engaged, screwing one woman while nuzzling the boobs of another. Rick wondered if they'd ever get to talk to the general.

The redhead smiled at Rick and put her hand on his thigh, moving it upwards. Tatiana slapped her hand away. "He's my fiancé. I don't share." Her hand moved between his thighs and Rick soon had an erection. Tatiana swung her leg over him and squatted down facing him. Then she lowered herself onto him, letting him penetrate her all the way. "Play with my boobs." She whispered in his ear. He cupped her left boob and brought it to his mouth. Her nipples were already stiff and he began teasing one with his tongue. In spite of doing something he'd vowed never to do, cheat on Kate, he moved from one boob to another and even stroked her taut ass. He hoped he could get off as soon as he could, but Tatiana seemed to be an expert at bringing him almost to a climax, but never quite there. Finally, he erupted inside her and sighed with relief. He looked over at General Li. The man had his head back and was snoring loudly.

"We've had a very long day." Tatiana said, standing up. "We'll go to our compartment now." She got up and headed for the door with Rick right behind her.

The woman who had let them in was standing at the door with two neatly stacked piles of clothing in her hands. "You're in compartment five. Your luggage is there." She licked her lips and looked at Rick. "If you need anything…"

"He'll get it from me." Tatiana said quickly, grabbing their clothes.

Once in their tiny compartment, Rick opened his mouth, only to have Tatiana put her hand over it. She pulled him into the tiny bathroom and turned the water on. "The walls may have ears." She whispered in his ear. "I'm so sorry. I knew that Li has mistresses. What general doesn't? I didn't know about this, I swear. But if I hadn't claimed you were my fiancé, he would have offered you one of his women. He'd have been highly insulted if you turned him down publicly. He would have lost face in front of his staff. He'd have had to kill you. And he would have expected me to sleep with him. I could have done that, of course…."

"No." Rick whispered back. "You don't have to sleep with anyone you don't want to. Not anymore."

She smiled. "You're sweet. Naïve, but sweet. " Tatiana looked around. "When we get back, I'll tell Kate what happened. That way she'll be mad at me. I'll say I forced you."

"She won't believe it and I don't lie to Kate. I'll tell her."

"We'll tell her."

Rick woke up in the narrow bed the next morning with a naked Tatiana wrapped around him and a young blonde girl standing over him. "Allo, mate. I brought you some 'ot water for shaving. Up an' at 'em, cuz General Li wants to see you."

Rick quickly shaved and they both got dressed.

Rick was again surprised when they entered the general's car. The hot tub and the couches were all gone. General Li sat at a plain wooden desk at the far end of the car. Similar desks were occupied by his staff officers, all busy doing on thing or another.

The general looked up at them. "Tatiana Johannayevna, and Mr. Castle. Come. We must talk." As he walked forward, Rick heard something pattering against the car. "Hail?" He said.

"Those are bullets!" Tatiana screamed.


	5. Chapter 5

I, Spy

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: Not mine. Rating: M, in spots. Time: The future. After season eight, before children.

 **Chapter Five. It's the Finger Chopper.**

"Bullets?" Castle said, but the word was drowned out by the roar of artillery and the chatter of machine guns from the train. Li and his men grabbed rifles and opened loopholes in the armor and began firing back. To Rick's dismay, Tatiana grabbed a rifle and began shooting. He went over to stand by her. "Isn't this dangerous?"

"Anyone who'd attack General Li's armored train is dangerous." Tatiana pointed towards her feet. "Be a dear and use the Suomi submachine gun. It has a seventy one round drum, but if you run out of ammo, there are more drums on the floor."

Rick opened a loophole nearest to Tatiana, took aim and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Tatiana reached over and pushed the bolt back and reached in front of the trigger and moved a lever. "It fires from an open bolt, Rick. The safety is in front of the trigger guard. Now shoot, darling." Rick was impressed that even in a firefight, Tatiana stayed in character.

Rick looked out and got a sight picture on a horseman firing a rifle at them. A short burst knocked him off his horse. Then just in front of him he saw a man dressed in shaggy animal skins holding a stick of dynamite with the fuse already lit. Rick aimed at the center of his body and pulled the trigger. The man rode into a dip in the ground and instead of hitting the body, the burst knocked the dynamite out of his hand. A few seconds later, Rick heard an explosion.

"Damn it! I missed him." Tatiana screamed. "Come back here you bastard! I'll kill you. I'll shoot all of your fingers off."

Rick looked out through his loophole and resumed firing. Then as soon as it had begun, the attack was over. The horsemen stopped and the train sped on.

"It was him!" Tatiana yelled at general Li. "I had a clear shot at the bastard and I missed."

"Who?" Both Rick and General Li asked.

"The Finger Chopper, that's who."

The general and his officers seemed quite perturbed about that. Rick was about to ask who this finger chopper was, when he saw Tatiana shake her head.

"You're sure?" Li asked.

"Of course I'm sure. I met the bastard several times in Russia."

"How far is the nearest telegraph station?" The general demanded.

"Twenty kilometers, sir." Someone replied.

"We must get there as quickly as possible." He turned to Rick and Tatiana. "We will have to postpone our discussion. Will you two join me for dinner tonight?"

"We'd be delighted." Rick answered.

"By the way, Mr. Castle, that was an amazing shot with the man with the dynamite. But in the future, no showing off, please. Just kill."

As soon as they were back in their compartment, Tatiana had her arms around him. "Violence always makes me so hot, darling." She said loudly. Then whispered in his ear. "The walls have ears, remember."

Rick caught on. "Oh, do that again." Then in a whisper. "What is it?"

"Everyone knows about the Finger Chopper. If you'd asked who he was, it would be very suspicious. " She said, pushing him down on their bed and starting to jump up and down. "He's a Korean named Park Sung Chee. He was conscripted into the Japanese Army, deserted and is now the biggest bandit in Mongolia. He's watched too many of your American western movies. He dresses all in black except for a white silk scarf and he carries a Colt Peacemaker pistol in a low slung holster, like your gunfighters do. But he's not stupid. He carries an American .45 Colt automatic pistol in a shoulder holster."

"Just like Pike Bishop in the _Wild Bunch_."

Tatiana just raised an eyebrow.

"Tatiana!" He yelled. "Oh my god." Then he whispered. "Who does he work for?"

She put her lips next to his ear. "He's a mercenary who works for whoever pays him. He's got the biggest bandit gang in Mongolia and raids were he pleases. I met him a couple of times when he was hired by the KGB. But whoever hired him for this must be quite wealthy and powerful to get the Finger Chopper and his men this deep into Manchuria."

"Why is he called the Finger Chopper?"

"Whenever he kills a man, straight up, man to man in a gunfight, he chops off his little finger as a trophy."

"Is he after General Li or us?"

Tatiana just shrugged.

They spent the rest of the day talking. Mostly it was Tatania that talked. Rick couldn't talk about who he really was if anyone was listening and if he screwed up any part of Colonel Storm's life story, the listener would get suspicious. Tatiana's life was like Kate's and not like hers. Her mother was dead, but due to cancer. Her dad had a drinking problem, but Tatiana seemed to think that was normal for Russian men. She had had two partners in the KGB, one was ex-Spetznaz, Russian Special Forces, and the other a rather conservative, family oriented type. Her boss, Colonel Lysenko, sounded nothing like either Montgomery or Gates.

In the late afternoon there was a knock on their door. The blonde who'd been in earlier stuck her head in. "General Li didn't get no lunch, on account o' he was trying to use the telegraph to corner the Finger Chopper, so he's right hungry. Dinner in half an hour?"

"We'll be there." Tatiana replied.

It was disconcerting for Rick to see Tatiana strip and wash herself with a hand towel, then stand over her suitcase, trying to decide what to wear. She finally settled on a simple blue dress that showed her assets off very nicely.

Arriving at the general's car, they found a table set up with two waiters in spotless white, a bottle of champagne cooling in an ice bucket and the general sitting with a brunette whose dress left nothing to the imagination.

"Please, sit down." The general offered. "I was just about to begin with the appetizers. Are oysters all right?"

Without waiting for a reply, the waiters began putting oysters on their plates. The general and Tatiana began talking about people and places they know in common as Rick kept quiet. Then he felt a foot rubbing up against his ankle. A quick look told him it wasn't Tatiana's and he prayed it wasn't the general's. He looked across the table and saw the brunette smiling at him and licking her lips. That was followed by a solid thunk from under the table and a look of pain crossing the brunette's face. Tatiana just smiled at her. Rick put his feet under his chair.

"So, Mr. Castle, you are engaged to Tatiana?" The general asked genially. "Please, tell us how that happened."

"We met in Hong Kong and it was love at first sight, as they say."

General Li looked skeptical. "I really never thought that Tatiana was such a romantic."

"As you know, my life changed when I left the KGB. Suddenly, I wanted to be more than what I was. And then, there was Rick. Love at first sight. I never would have believed it either."

"And what brings you to Asia, Mr. Castle. From your accent, I'd wager you're an American."

"That I am. Actually, I represent a group of investors looking for opportunities in Asia. We hear wonderful things about the possibilities here. The other investors are rather conservative, banker types, unsuited to a rough and tumble life, so I was sent out here to look around. Do you have any suggestions?"

The General looked thoughtful. "Oddly enough, there is an Anglo-American mining company working somewhere around Kashgar in Sinkiang. If your countrymen found that potentially profitable, perhaps you should look into it?"

"Kashgar? Sounds interesting."

"You'll see, darling."

Castle managed to get through the meal and back to their compartment with Tatiana. As soon as they were inside, she pushed him onto the bed. "I know I was wrong to kick that slut, but I love you so much. I just go mad when another woman flirts with you." She took off a shoe and threw it against the wall.

Rick grinned. "You don't have to worry about a thing, Tatiana. You're the only one for me."

She tossed the pillow off the bed and ripped off the bedclothes, making a sound that was remarkably like someone tearing off their clothing. "Now! Take me now, Rick."

They sat on the bed together moaning. Tatiana screamed, then, "You're so big, lover. So big."

Rick nodded. "All for you."

In an end compartment one of Li's officers took off his headphones. He'd report to Li that Tatiana and the man who called himself Castle appeared to really be in love. Or at least in lust.

Arriving in Mukden, the capital of Manchuria, Castle found himself fascinated with the place. On the streets you could see chauffeured limousines, battered old trucks, ox carts and horsemen, that, but for the modern rifles slung across their backs, could have ridden with Genghis Khan. The sidewalks had women in the latest Paris styles, men in bespoke suits from Saville Row in London, surly soldiers in drab, ill fitting uniforms and peasants in home made straw sandals and thin cotton shirts and trousers. Beggars and bankers, women looking for a man and anonymous "business men" crowded the streets, all speaking in a cacophony of languages. As soon as they were off the train, they were besieged by touts offering them tips on the best restaurants, the best hotels, the best of everything. For a price, of course.

Tatiana shouted at them in Chinese and finally was able to hail a cab to take them to their hotel. While Tatiana was out arranging transportation to Kashgar, Rick had gone shopping. Now, he stared at himself in the mirror: Boots, khaki pants, a blue work shirt and a brown leather jacket, all topped off with a fedora. "If I could only have found a whip."

"A whip? What would you need a whip for? And why are you dressed like that?" Tatiana stood in the doorway staring at him.

"Were going out into Mongolia and Sinkiang. We'll be roughing it, right?"

Tatiana laughed. "No, Rick. We have tickets to Kashgar on the next flight there, just after lunch. Now please change into a suit so we can have lunch and go to the airport. The bellhops will be here in a minute or so for our luggage." Sighing, Castle changed clothes.

Once at the airport, Castle cheered up when he saw the plane. "A Ford Trimotor? That is so cool."

Tatiana leaned against him. "You've seen airplanes that can fly faster than sound and you believe _this_ is cool?" She teased.

"You bet. Indiana Jones flew in one of these."

"Who?" But Rick was off exploring the plane until the stewardess approached him. "Welcome to Anglo-Manchurian Airlines, sir. Please begin boarding." The stewardess, although Asian, spoke perfect English.

However, there was a problem as soon as they boarded. The Reverend Mr. Watts objected sitting across from a woman "dressed like a harlot." He glared at Rick. "I can't understand why you let your wife dress that way, young man."

"Oh, we're not married, sir." Rick replied with a smile. "We're living in sin."

"And happily so." Tatiana added.

As the reverend fumed, the stewardess found a passenger who would switch seats. Rick and Tatiana were joined by a fiftyish man, quite muscular with a network of scars on his hands. "Sir, ma'am, George M. Winkler, your servant." Winkler had a Southern accent. "I'm an oil geologist, from El Paso, in the great state of Texas originally. However, I've been out here for four years and found nary a drop of oil." He reached into his jacket pocket and removed a flask. "Care for a taste, son? Good Kentucky bourbon."

Castle took the flask. "I'm a Scotch man, but…" he took a long sip and handed the flask back. Tatiana cleared her throat loudly and glared at both Rick and Winkler.

"My apologies, ma'am." Winkler handed the flask to Tatiana who took a drink and handed it back.

"Quite a lady you have there, sir."

"Rick Castle. This is my fiancé Tatiana Beckov."

Tatiana smiled. "I'm from Russia. We're weaned on vodka at home."

"Russian?" Winkler was surprised. "You have a perfect American accent."

She shrugged. "My parents were Irish and I have a gift for languages."

The airplane took off and the passengers settled in for a long flight.

Several hours into the flight, Winkler sat up straight and tapped Rick's knee. "Son, the pilot just walked by here and he has a parachute with him. That ain't good."

Before they could react, the stewardess approached the pilot. "Who are you? Why do you have a…?" She was cut off by a gunshot, hitting her square in the chest. She fell back heavily. The pilot turned to cover the passengers and struggled into the parachute. Then he opened the cabin door and jumped.

The reverend Mr. Watts began screaming while a medical missionary checked the stewardess and sadly shook his head.

"That really ain't good."

"Who's flying the plane?" Rick and Tatiana asked at once.

"It must be the copilot." Winkler said. "I saw two men head for the cockpit when we boarded."

They ran to the cockpit and pushed open the door with some difficulty, to find that it had been blocked by the body of the copilot. His throat had been cut.

"Shit." The three said together.


	6. Chapter 6

I, Spy

By UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I still don't own Castle. Do I? Rating: M, in spots. Time: The Future. After season eight, before children.

 **Chapter Six. Into the Wild Blue Yonder.**

"Can you fly?" Tatiana screamed.

"I did some research for one of the…"

"Can you fly?"

"No!"

She turned to Winkler. He shook his head.

"Can you fly?" Castle asked.

"A little. An old boyfriend was a pilot. He took me up and gave me some lessons, but I never landed. That's the hard part."

"Very hard. Especially if we crash." He turned to face the other passengers. "Can anyone here fly a plane?"

Their only response was some very loud and unholy complaints from Reverend Mr. Watts.

"You're the pilot." Castle said, pushing Tatiana into the cockpit.

"Move the co-pilot and sit in his seat." She told Rick.

"Why?"

"Because I need all the help I can get."

Tatiana put her feet on the rudder pedals and her hands on the steering yoke. She then examined the instruments. "We're on autopilot. The phony pilot would have wanted the plane nice and steady while he walked back and put on his parachute."

"Is that good?"

"We don't know where we are." Tatiana looked out of the cockpit. "From the position of the sun, we're headed more or less west, which is good. But we could still miss Kashgar by a hundred miles and end up in the Taklimakan Desert. And crash there."

Rick looked down. "Mongolia and Sinkiang are all pretty flat. I don't see any landmarks."

"Hey, wait a sec." Winkler said. "That fella wouldn't have jumped out in the middle of nowhere. Can you turn around and backtrack a little? I've been over this whole country. Maybe I'll recognize something."

Tatiana said something in Russian that may have been a prayer or a curse, then disengaged the autopilot and put the plane in a very slow turn. "According to the compass, we're now on a reciprocal heading so we should be heading back the way we came."

"There!" Winkler pointed. "Dead ahead. That's a little oasis and some buildings." As they flew over it, Winkler studied it carefully. "I was there about two years ago. Horrible little place. Overrun with rats and lice and vermin, but I know where we are. We're a bit south of where we want to go. Turn around and head a bit north."

Every time they flew over a little village or an unusual landmark, Winkler corrected their course.

Tatiana kept looking at the fuel gauges. We're running low on fuel. How far is Kashgar?"

Winkler's brow furrowed. "Shouldn't be too far. Ten minutes, maybe?"

Twenty minutes later they still hadn't found their destination. Tatiana kept one eye on the fuel gauge. "The fuel gauge is so low, I'm not sure how much we have left. We may have to land before we crash."

Castle looked down. After all of the flat spaces in Mongolia and Sinkiang, the ground below seemed to be all small hills.

"There it is!" Yelled Winkler. "That's Kashgar." Ahead of them was a town of mostly mud bricks scattered across the steppe. "Call the tower and let them know we're coming in."

Rick grabbed the radio, but couldn't get a response. "I think he sabotaged the radio."

"Of course he did." Tatiana muttered. "I hope this works." She lined up on the runway and began cutting the power to the three engines. They dropped lower and lower and Tatiana had to fight the wind to keep the plane on course. A good three hundred feet of the ground, the center engine quit. A hundred feet up, the other two engines died. "Hang on!" She yelled.

The plane hit the ground hard, bounced up, came back down, not quite as hard. Then the plane's wing dipped and caught on the ground, spinning the plane around. Its tail flipped up, but not quite over and then they skidded backwards down the runway. Finally, it stopped.

Rick and Tatiana looked at each other and began laughing hysterically. Rick turned to Winkler. "I could use another drink."

"So could I." Tatiana added.

Winkler handed over his flask. "Ma'am, once we get outta this thing, the drinks are on me."

As the three walked out of the cockpit all of the passengers congratulated them. Well, not all the passengers.

"You could have killed me with that reckless stunt." The Reverend Mr. Watts screamed in Tatiana's face. "I'm suing the airline and I'm suing you and I'm suing your illicit lover and I'm suing Henry Ford for his airplane and I'm suing…"

Rick looked at Tatiana. "Oh, go ahead. You know you want to."

Tatiana smiled and hit Watts as hard as she could. He folded up and everyone on the plane just walked over him to leave.

However, they had to talk to the airline and the police about the two murders on board, so it was late by the time the three found the best bar and restaurant in all of Kashgar. And true to his word, Winkler paid for everything.

Finally alone in their bedroom in their hotel, Rick put his arm on Tatiana's shoulder. "Thank you for saving my life today."

She smiled. "I was also saving mine, you know."

"I know, but I'm still alive, so I'm thanking you." She moved a bit closer, so Rick backed off. "We need to get to sleep. We have to find this mining outfit tomorrow." There's a couch here. I'll sleep there."

"Kate is a very lucky woman."

"And I'm a very lucky man."

When they got up the next morning, Rick was happy to finally be able to put on his Indiana Jones outfit. Admiring himself in the mirror, he decided he did look like a dashing and adventurous archeologist. "If I only had a whip." He said softly.

Tatiana, dressed much as Rick was, lifted an eyebrow. "Really? Why would you want a whip? Guns are much better." She held out two pistols in shoulder holsters. "Put the shoulder holsters on under your leather jacket."

"What are they?"

"Browning Hi Power automatics in 9 mm. I have a pair was well."

Rick couldn't help smiling.

Tatiana smiled back. "Not that pair, you naughty boy." She handed Rick four spare magazines and two boxes of cartridges. Then she pulled out her suitcase. "General Li was kind enough to loan us a Suomi submachine gun, with spare magazines, also 9 mm. And I have a rifle as well." She pulled out a disassembled rifle and began assembling it. "This is a German Mauser in 7mm. Both the Chinese and Manchurian armies use it, so there's no problem getting ammunition. It has a Zeiss telescopic sight." She turned around and held the rifle out for Rick's inspection.

"Looks good to me."

"Then let's see if we can find this Anglo-American mining company that Colonel Storm seems to be so interested in. Leave the Suomi and take the Brownings."

Rick nodded. "Leave the gun, take the cannoli."

Tatiana looked at him, frowning. "What cannoli?"

"You never saw _The Godfather_?"

"Whose godfather?"

"No, who's on first."

"Rick…"

"When we get home, we'll have a movie marathon. You, me, Kate and Simone. And maybe Alexis and Martha."

Tatiana walked to the door. "Are you coming, Castle?"

They walked to the market place in Kashgar, which Tatiana insisted would be the very best place to pick up gossip, but the people there either didn't speak any language that either Tatiana or Rick spoke, or they just didn't want to talk about this mysterious mining company.

"Obviously, Colonel Storm has frightened the locals. They won't talk."

Before Rick could reply, a hand tapped him on the shoulder. "Say, you folks need a good guide? I'm the best there is."

They turned to face a stocky thirty-something Asian man who smiled at them. "You're the best?" Tatiana asked.

He bowed slightly. "San Kol Sun, at your service, but everyone calls me Sam. I was educated by Catholic missionaries in China, although I'm a Korean myself. I know everyone and everything in Kashgar and out into the desert all the way to Tibet, or Russia or anywhere else."

Tatiana nodded. "Okay, if you're so good, we need to find an Anglo-American mining company that no one here wants to talk about. Can you help?"

Sam laughed. "Sure. You want Sandline International. They got in from the desert early, early in the morning. They're staying over at Kimiko's. But I'm betting they won't be up and about for hours. Say, you want lunch? I know a great restaurant just down the way. My treat."

Sam took off through the market place and Rick and Tatiana shrugged and followed.

The Fragrant Concubine was no more than a tent, but they served surprisingly good cheeseburgers, which Rick found out qualified as exotic foreign cuisine in Kashgar. Sam chewed on his burger and talked. "Other folks have been trying to get the recipe for the secret sauce here, but no one has ever succeeded."

"We're not interested in secret sauces, what do you know about the mining company?"

"Wait a minute." Rick interrupted. "I'm interested in secret sauces and we have time. Do you think he'd share?"

" _She_ would slit your throat from ear to ear if you tried anything." Speaking was a slender and quite beautiful girl, who looked hardly to be out of her teens. And maybe not out of them.

Sam shot to his feet, followed by Rick. "Min!" Sam said. "Really, he was just curious. He's not out to steal your secret sauce's secret."

"And you know this because?' Min said snippily.

"They're my clients. I only work for honest people." Sam said with a smile.

"Hmph!" Min snorted, turning up her nose. "So that means you'll be out in the desert again, leaving me all alone."

"Min, I have to make a living. All I know…" But Sam was already talking to Min's back as she walked out the back of the tent. Sam turned and gave them a sickly sort of smile. "She's really okay. Just….Just let me go talk to her." He disappeared through the back tent flap. After that, Rick and Tatiana heard a lot of shouting, mostly from Min and in a language neither understood.

Sam came back out. "We should probably head for Kimiko's. I'll bet the Sandline people are up now."

"Is everything okay with Min?" Rick asked.

"Sure. Fine." Sam didn't sound fine, however.

Kimiko's was located in a very large, old caravansary. It was many things, a hotel, restaurant, bar, brothel, gambling hall, opium den and marketplace for mostly illegal goods. Sam appeared to be known there and got them a table and some drinks.

"Okay, where's the people we're supposed to see?" Tatiana asked softly, although the noise covered her voice.

"There!" Sam pointed to a group of men coming down the stairs. "That's their head man, Gerald Tyson and he rest of the group."

Rick found himself once again looking into the face of 3XK. He wondered if this Earth had a Dr. Kelly Neiman as well, then decided he didn't want to know.

Tyson and his men were lead to a table not too far from Rick, Tatiana and Sam.

"Maybe we can eavesdrop?" Rick said.

"Given the noise, it'll be better if I lip read."

"You can lip read?"

She rolled her eyes. "Can't everyone?"

But, lip reading wasn't necessary. After ordering drinks for his men, Tyson stood up. "Gentlemen, we're rich. We found it. And I have the map right here." He waved a piece of paper around.

Over the roar of the crowd, Castle didn't hear the gunshot, he just saw the blood spurting from Tyson's head as he pitched backwards. Then all hell broke loose. One of Tyson's men dove for the map, only to be shot. Half the bar seemed to be shooting at the other half. Sam dove on top of Rick and Tatiana and drove them to the floor.

Tatiana struggled to get her pistol out of her shoulder holster. "Get off of me, you clown." She screamed.

Castle drew his Browning, but had no idea who to shoot. Tatiana finally managed to draw her pistol and saw her target, a tall Asian dressed all in black with a Colt at his hip. She aimed and squeezed the trigger and….A waitress crashed down on her so that her bullet went into the floor. "The Finger Chopper, Rick. He has the map. Shoot him."

Rick took a snap shot at the Finger Chopper but as he fired, a man with a shotgun stepped in front of the Finger Chopper and the bullet hit him instead. Rick tried to get another shot, but the Finger Chopper disappeared into the crowd and was gone.

Rick, Tatiana and Sam crawled toward the exit, avoiding the firefight all around them. They got outside just in time to see the bandit leader and his men ride off on horseback.

"Damn it! He escaped. We'll never catch him at night." Tatiana raged.

Sam walked out into the muddy street and knelt down. "We'll track him in the morning."

Castle checked his watch. "By dawn he'll have a seven hour lead on us."

"And he'll be on horseback. We'll be in my truck. And I memorized the hoof prints. I'll know them when I see them again. I did say I was the best guide in Kashgar, didn't I?"

"We should get some sleep then." Tatiana said.

They met with Sam before dawn. Sam had his truck and a surprise.

"Min?" Tatiana asked. "What's she doing here?"

Sam smiled a bit apprehensively. "She's going to be the cook and driver. I need to sit on the front of the truck so I can watch for tracks. And she can shoot, too."

"And he's not going without me." Min finished.

Tatiana looked at Rick, who shrugged. "Let's go. We're burning daylight."

They drove slowly on the steppe outside of Kashgar, going generally south. Sam, as he had said, rode on the front of the truck to look for tracks. Since they couldn't go too fast over the rough ground anyway, it wasn't a problem. And he kept insisting he had spotted the tracks of the Finger Chopper and his men. Not that Rick or Tatiana could tell either way.

At noon, they stopped for lunch and to allow Sam to pour more gas into the truck's tank from cans in the back. Min made lunch, which both Rick and Tatiana found to be excellent.

"Are we ready to go?" Rick asked, finishing the last of his beer.

"No." Sam said quietly. "Not until we see what they want." Several hundred yards away was a group of some three dozen horsemen, just sitting on their mounts, looking at the truck and its passengers. Sam grabbed a set of binoculars and studied them. "They're not the Finger Chopper's people, at least not the ones he was with last night. They could be his, or someone he hired to stop anyone who'd track him. But they're bandits, all right."

"Are you sure?" Rick asked.

"I'm sure. They're well armed, which isn't that unusual out here. But I can see some items of uniform on some of them. Deserters from the Chinese Army, the Manchurian Army, the Russian Army. I think we might even have a deserter from the British Indian Army from way south of here. I wonder how he got here."

"Who cares how he got here?" Castle demanded. "How are we going to get out of here?"

"Like this." Tatiana handed him his submachine gun. Min had gotten two rifles out of the truck. One for her and one for Sam. To Castle they appeared to be the same model as Tatiana's. Minus the telescopic sight.

"Here they come." Sam said. The bandits started towards them at a walk. As they did, the bandits jacked rounds into the chambers of their rifles, ready to fire. The horses moved to a trot.

"Okay, let them have it." Sam yelled, firing and dropping one man.

Tatiana fired and turned to Rick. "Wait until they're a hundred yards away. About where that big grey rock is. And remember to fire short bursts, okay?" She turned and fired, knocking down another bandit.

The horses started to canter. The bandits didn't fire, knowing that firing at any distance from a moving horse was a waste of ammunition. They kept coming.

Castle's guts were starting to tighten and he was sweating heavily. Waiting and not shooting was the hardest thing he'd ever done. The bandits seemed to be moving in slow motion. I seemed like they'd never make it to the grey rock. And suddenly they were at the rock. Castle pulled the bolt back, took the safety off and fired. He surprised himself by squeezing off a short burst and knocking down two bandits. He tried not to think about the fact that he'd killed someone.

"Get under the truck!" Sam yelled. To Castle's embarrassment, Tatiana had to drag him under the truck as the bandits swept past the truck and started riding around it. "This is like a Western movie." He said, to no one.

Suddenly a horse went down right in front of him and the rider jumped off and advanced towards him. He aimed at Castle and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened, he was out of ammunition. He grabbed a clip of cartridges and started to push them into his rifle. Castle centered him in his sights and put a burst in his chest. The man stood for a second and pitched over on his face.

And then they were gone. "They're gone." Castle yelled.

"But not far." Tatiana said, pointing ahead of them. There, more than five hundred yards away, the remaining bandits sat on their horses on a small rise. Tatiana looked through her telescopic sight. "Interesting. Two of them seem to be having an argument. One seems to be yelling and pointing at us and the other is yelling and pointing away from us." She laughed. "I think I'll add to the no vote." She fired and Castle could see one man fall from his horse. The bandits sat there for a second and then moved away and were gone.

The four of them moved out from under the truck. Sam and Min moved to make sure the dead bandits around them were dead and then began checking the truck to make sure it was okay.

"Rick?" Tatiana said, pointing at him. "You're bleeding."

"I'm what?"

Tatiana walked over and pulled back his leather coat. There was blood seeping through his shirt. "Sam, where's the medical kit?"

Min grabbed a box with a red cross on it from the truck and ran to Castle and Tatiana. She pulled off his jacket and then cut away his shirt. "Not bad at all, just a graze."

Castle was now starting to feel the pain as the adrenalin wore off. "Are you sure? It feels like more than a graze."

"I'm sure. I'll need to suture it. We don't seem to have any anesthetic. Will you be all right?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"No." Tatiana began to sew him up. When she was done, she kissed him lightly. "Too bad. We won't be able to make love for a while, darling. I hope you'll survive."

"Do I have a choice?"

Tatiana laughed.

They stayed where they were for the night because of Rick's wound. That night, Tatiana and Rick listened to the sound of Min and Sam making love, rather loudly. "They'd expect the same from us. And with no walls between them and us, they might get suspicious. It was lucky you got that bullet wound."

Rick's side was aching, in spite of the Scotch he'd had after dinner. "Next time why don't you get lucky?"

Tatiana chuckled. "We can probably explain us making love for the benefit of keeping General Li's face intact, but would you want to explain making love out here to Kate?"

"No."

"See? Lucky. What Kate would do to you would be much worse."

They hadn't been moving for more than an hour the next morning when they spotted a saddled horse ahead of them, chewing on some sort of shrub. They stopped he truck and Sam very carefully approached the horse. The horse pretty much ignored him and allowed Sam to pull up on leg and examine his horse shoes. Sam walked back.

"It's one of the horses we've been tracking. But what's he doing out here?"

They found the answer in another ten minutes.

"Stop!" Sam yelled.

As the truck stopped they all got out. There ahead of them were some live horses and five dead men.


	7. Chapter 7

I, Spy

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: Not mine. Rating: M, in parts. Time: The future, after season eight and before children.

 **Chapter Seven. The Good, the Bad….You know the rest.**

Sam hoped down from the truck and went to the nearest horse, who was nuzzling a man on the ground, probably his owner. Sam quickly checked the horses. "These are the horses we've been tracking. The Finger Chopper killed these men."

"How can you tell?" Rick asked.

"Their left little fingers are gone." Sam replied. "He wouldn't take the fingers unless it was a fair fight, so he must have killed all five of them at once."

They walked over to examine the bodies. All but one still had their pistols in their holsters. The one who had managed to draw hadn't gotten a shot off. Suddenly one of the men coughed.

"He's alive. Get the medical kit, Min."

"Don't bother, mate. I'm done for."

"You're English." Sam said.

"Australian, but I'll forgive the insult this time." He wheezed.

"Why did he kill you?"

"He wanted whatever the map is to for himself, the dirty rat."

"What's it for? The map I mean."

"Only one thing out here that it could be. Genghis Khan's treasure. I've been searching for it for thirty years. That's why he hired me."

"Treasure?" Sam said. "That's a myth."

"Maybe." Said the old man. "But old Genghis died and they buried him with women and soldiers and plenty of gold and jewels so he'd have 'em in the afterlife. They gotta be somewhere. But I got that Finger Chopper."

"You shot him?" Tatiana asked, looking at his holstered pistol.

"Nope. The map is to an old graveyard. The rest of the map to the treasure is in a grave. A description of the grave is written on the map. Written in ancient Mongol. Only I could read it. I told Finger Chopper that the grave was one with a big statue of a horse as a tombstone. I lied. It's three graves to the left and five up. That should piss off…." The old man moaned and died.

"I know where the old graveyard is." Min said.

"There are a couple out this way." Sam said. "Are you sure you know the right one?"

"There's only one with a horse as a gravestone around here. It's the one."

"How far?"

"Maybe thirty miles in a straight line."

Sam smiled. "Since we don't have to go slow to track him, we can run him down before he ever gets to the graveyard. Or get there before him and wait for him."

"We can't go thirty miles in a straight line. We're at the edge of the Taklimakan Desert. Ahead of us is soft sand. A man on horseback can negotiate it, but the heavy truck will sink up to its axels. We can take an old caravan road that runs along a ridge, but it doubles our time. At least."

Sam cursed, but knew that Min knew the area as well as he did. "Let's go. If we move fast, we can be half way to the graveyard by nightfall."

But by nightfall, they had only reached the ridge and the old road. Even with the headlights, it was too dangerous to drive at night, so they stopped and camped. Once night had fallen, Sam walked away from the truck with his binoculars and scanned the surrounding desert. Then he cursed.

"What is it?" Tatiana asked, as she, Rick and Min walked over to Sam.

He handed Tatiana the binoculars. "Way out there, you can just see it. A small pinprick of fire. It's the Finger Chopper, camped like we are. And he'll get there ahead of us."

The next morning, they began their drive along the old caravan road. The road, such as it was, was just a track left by thousands of years of travel by camels, horses and men. The truck had to go slowly over the rough road. Sam cursed and cursed, but the truck could go no faster.

Min insisted they stop for lunch, even though Sam objected. Both Tatiana and Rick were ambivalent about the trip now. While getting a treasure would be nice, it obviously had nothing to do with either finding the good Derrick Storm or stopping the bad Colonel Storm.

"Of course if we do find a huge treasure, "Castle murmured in Tatiana's ear, "you'll be set for life. You can go to another Earth and do anything you like."

"What will you do with your share?"

"You can have it. I'm already set for life, but if there's some jewelry I think Kate would like, I'll take that."

Tatiana just laughed. At the same time, Sam laughed.

"What is it?' Castle asked.

"Way out on the horizon. A man. Dressed all in black. And he's walking towards the graveyard. The Finger Chopper's horse must have died. We'll beat him there."

They continued their slow drive along the ancient road until a loud bang stopped them. Castle thought it was a gunshot, but Sam knew it was a flat tire. He had everyone out of the truck and working on jacking it up as he struggled to retrieve the spare, which was under all the baggage they had loaded. At long last, and not soon enough for Sam, the truck was ready to roll again.

They stopped again at nightfall and made camp. Min cooked dinner while Sam scanned the horizon with his binoculars. "Suppose he kept walking at night?" He asked no one in particular.

"He still won't get there before we do." Min shot back. "And he might just take a tumble down a sand dune and break a leg. Whatever happens, you can look all night and it won't change anything at all. So come and get your dinner and then let's go to bed."

Once the two couples had settled down on either side of the truck, Tatiana asked Rick, a bit too loudly, "Are you feeling well enough to make love, darling?"

Castle tried to sound hurt. "My ribs still ache. Jacking the truck up today didn't help me any. But if you want to…"

"Oh, no, lover. I wouldn't dream of hurting you. You're my sweet Ricky." She leaned in and planted a kiss on his cheek. "Good night, my love."

When they woke up the next morning, Castle noticed something different. He wasn't sure what it was. He woke up Tatiana. "Wake up. "He whispered. "Something's wrong. Everything is too quiet. Min should be up and making breakfast."

Tatiana's hand snaked to her holster. "Damn! Where are my pistols?"

Castle looked for his. They were gone as well.

"Good morning folks." Sam said. "Sleep well?"

They had found their weapons. The pistols were tucked into Sam's belt and their rifle and submachine gun were slung over his shoulders.

"Roll over on your stomachs and put your hands behind your backs." Sam demanded.

They complied. "Look, you don't have to kill us. Like I said, I'm set for life. You can have all of the treasure. At least let Tatiana and Min go. They can't hurt you."

"Oh, I'll let Min go, all right. Once I've done what I came here to do. She is my girlfriend, after all. It's just she doesn't always approve of what I do."

"Then you can let Tatiana go, too. She can't hurt you."

"The hell I can't. I'll track you down and kill you, you lying bastard." Tatiana screamed at him.

"That's not helping." Rick scolded her.

Sam knelt behind them and handcuffed their hands and hobbled their legs with rope. "How come you two are pretending to be engaged, anyway?"

"Who says we're pretending?"

Sam laughed. "I say you're pretending. So why? And if you don't love her, why make such an issue of keeping her alive and not you?"

Castle decided against explaining the whole alternate universe thing. "I do love Tatiana, but I love my wife a lot more."

"As good an answer as any, I guess." Sam pulled them to their feet and hauled them to the back of the truck. There they found Min, not only bound, but gagged. As soon as Sam removed her gag, she started screaming at him in some language they didn't know.

They bounced around in the back of the truck for hours while Sam drove much too fast to get to the old graveyard. About noon, he stopped.

"Out of the truck." He helped first Min, then Tatiana and then Rick down, then cut the ropes hobbling them. He picked up a large sack that rattled and gestured to them to go ahead of them. In a few minutes, they saw the graveyard. Just ahead of them was a large, white marble horse, much the worse for wear, but still recognizable as a horse. "I spotted him from the ridge a while back. He saw me, I'm pretty sure, but he may not know that we have any interest in him. We'll see."

Then they saw a tiny black figure come over a sand dune and head straight for the marble horse.

"It's time." Sam said. "Turn around, Min."

The girl did so and Sam undid her cuffs. He handed the key to her. "When I reach the horse, you can uncuff then, but not before. Understand?" Min nodded. He turned to Rick and Tatiana. "You're weapons are in the gunny sack."

Min refused to release them until Sam had taken position by the marble horse. By that time the Finger Chopper was only a few hundred yards from Sam. As soon as she was free, Tatiana grabbed the gunny sack. In her mind's eye, she could see Sam in the crosshairs of her sight. Then she cursed. "Damn that man."

"What is it?" Castle asked.

"He disassembled our weapons, poured motor oil all over them and then put sand in the bag. Everything is covered with sand. The weapons, the clips and the ammo. Help me find the parts of the Mauser. It'll be the easiest to clean and reassemble."

"Maybe we should try to start the truck and get out of here? The Finger Chopper is here." The two women followed Rick's gaze. The black clad gunman was on the far side of the graveyard, his coat pulled back and his Colt ready.

Sam faced him, also wearing a low slung holstered pistol. Castle thought they looked at each other for forever. Then there was the sound of a pistol shot and the Finger Chopper fell back, dead.

"Sam killed the Finger Chopper. "Castle marveled. "The guy killed five guys in a fair fight. How did Sam do that?"

"I'm pretty good." Sam said, walking back to the truck. "Come on, I need to show you something."

They followed Sam over to the Finger Chopper. Sam motioned to the corpse. "Take the glove off of his left hand."

Castle hung back, but Tatiana knelt and removed the glove. The left little finger was missing and the wound was well healed. Tatiana frowned. "The Finger Chopper cut off his own finger? Why?"

"He didn't. I did, the first time I shot him. I thought he was dead, but I should have checked closer."

Castle got it. "You're the Finger Chopper."

Sam shook his head. "No, I'm your guide, Sam. This is the Finger Chopper. Understand?"

Castle understood. For whatever reason didn't want anyone to know he was the Finger Chopper, so the dead man got the job. "Whatever you say, Sam."

Sam smiled. "Good. Now what do you say we go find the treasure?"

While Min fixed lunch, Rick and Tatiana laboriously cleaned their weapons and ammunition. "Why did he do that?" Tatiana asked.

Rick shrugged. "Hard to say. Part pride. He's angry at some phony Finger Chopper pretending to be him. And maybe it's like the old western movies. You know, the fastest gun just wants to settle down but other fast guns keep coming for him? Now Sam can do what he wants."

"You think so?"

"Or maybe he's just crazy."

Tatiana glared at him.

After lunch, they went to look for the treasure map. They opened the proper grave and found no corpse, but a wooden box covered in tar to keep out the elements. Sam opened it and they all gathered around. "It's not in Mongol." Sam said disappointed.

"It is in Russian." Tatiana said, taking the parchment inside and carefully unfolding it. "It was written by a Russian mercenary in the service of the Mongols about a century after Genghis Khan's death. A Mongol leader named Amindural who ruled part of Mongolia and was a descendent of Genghis Khan sent out parties to locate his famous ancestor's grave. It seems that Amindural needed cash badly. Anyway this party found old Genghis's grave, but contracted the plague on the way back. They left this map here in case they died on the way back." Tatiana turned the parchment over. "And here's a map."

Sam looked at the map. "We can be there in two days. Let's go."

That night, Sam and Min made love on one side of the truck and Rick and Tatiana got into their sleeping bags on the other side. "Can I ask you a question, Rick?"

"Sure. Ask away."

"Do you really love me?"

Rick thought about how to answer that one. "Yes, I do. I love all of the Kate Becketts out there, and even though you're Tatiana Beckov, you're still a Kate Beckett. But I love my wife Kate most of all."

Tatiana was silent for a long time. "Rick, I love you too. I can't explain it, I just do."

"The Universe demands that all Ricks and all Kates love each other."

"Do you suppose there's Rick for me?"

"Somewhere. I'm sure of it."

Tatiana had a lot to think about that night.

They drove for two days before they saw a group of buildings ahead of them. They stopped the truck a few hundred yards from the buildings and approached them cautiously.

"They're empty." Sam called out. The big one is some sort of a barracks for the workers, then there's a storehouse. It still has stuff in it. And the smallest building is an office of some sort. And, here's a mineshaft. Let's try it out."

Rick checked the office. "Look at these records. This is Sandline's operation."

There was a car that was raised and lowered by a diesel engine. A little bit of work and some fuel, found in the storehouse and they were ready to go. Sam was hopping up and down with excitement as was Rick.

"A real buried treasure? How cool is that?" He hugged Tatiana he was so happy.

"Don't get your hopes up, Rick."

As the four of them were lowered slowly down, Rick noticed something. "Sam, were down to bedrock now and it doesn't look like any of the bedrock has been touched before."

"Don't worry. The treasure is probably off to the side."

When they got to the bottom of the shaft, they found one gallery leading off. It stopped after about fifty feet."

"Where's the treasure?" Sam went through the gallery looking for hidden doors or passageways.

"There isn't one. At least not here." Min said. "One of the old Mongols must have lived and gotten back. The treasure has been gone for centuries."

"Or this is just a mining company. They never were looking for treasure." Castle added.

"Do you see anything? Gold? Silver? Jewels?" Sam asked desperately.

"Nothing."

When they got back to the surface, Castle walked back over to the office and looked through the paperwork that had been left behind. "I know what they were looking for. Pitchblende."

"What the hell is that?" Sam asked.

"They extract radium from it to make the numbers on wrist watches that glow in the dark. "

"Is it valuable?" Sam demanded.

Castle shrugged. "I guess. I don't really know anything about the watch industry." _But I do know you can make plutonium from the stuff and build nuclear weapons._ He thought.

"What do we do now?" Min asked.

"I'll take you two back to Kashgar and come back here and look for the treasure. It has to be around here someplace."

"Unless someone got to it before we did." Min said softly.

"There's dynamite in the storage shed." Sam said bitterly. "I'm going to collapse the shaft they dug."

"Good idea." Tatiana said.

There were several boxes of dynamite in the shed and Sam and Tatiana took them to the bottom of the shaft, and hooked blasting caps to electrical wires. Once they were back above ground, Sam connected he wires to detonator box. "Care to do the honors?" He asked Tatiana. She grinned and pushed he plunger down, causing a huge explosion. The explosion blew out a thin section of dirt just at the level of the bedrock, cascading gold and jewels as well as the last remains of Genghis Khan into the shaft which promptly collapsed.

After that, there was a long truck ride back to Kashgar, then a plane ride to Mukden, a very long train ride to Pusan and then a short trip by junk to the _USS Indiana._

Kate was waiting for them on the deck of the sub.


	8. Chapter 8

I, Spy

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: Oddly enough, I still don't own Castle. Rating: K, in spots. Time: The future. After season eight, before children.

 **Chapter Eight. Meet the Folk.**

Rick stared at the deck of the sub, unable to meet Kate's eyes. Luckily, Tatiana was doing her best to defend him.

He could feel Kate's eyes boring into him. "Let me get this straight. In Hong Kong, he had to have sex with you to save your life. And then, on this general's armored train, you had to have sex with him to save his life. Did I get that right?"

"Yes, Captain Castle. And maybe save my own life. General Li would have offered a woman to Rick and would have lost much face if Rick had turned him down. He'd have had Rick killed. And perhaps me, too."

"You couldn't have faked it like you supposedly did the other times?"

"Not supposedly. We did fake it. We bounced on the bed and made noises like we were making love, but nothing happened. But with Li, we were right next to him. We couldn't fake it. Please, Kate, if you need to punish someone, punish me. I was responsible, not Rick."

That got Rick to look at Kate. "No, you shouldn't punish Tatiana. I'm your husband, and I was at fault. Punish me, then. Whatever you want to do is okay with me because I deserve it."

Kate was still glaring at him. "You're right. Tatiana doesn't deserve to be punished. She did what she thought was necessary." Kate turned to the Russian. "Tatiana, would you go back to your quarters? I need to talk to Rick."

Tatiana headed for the water tight door. "Please don't punish him. He did what he had to do."

Once Tatiana was gone, Kate sat next to Castle. "You love her, don't you?"

"I love all of the infinite number of Kate Becketts everywhere. I don't know, maybe there's a thoroughly evil Kate Beckett out there that I wouldn't love. But I'd try to change her. To help her. But all of the love I have for all of the Kates out there is nothing like the love I have for you."

"I know that. But it's hard to know that your husband loves….What, millions of women? I felt something for the Ricks we've met, maybe it was love. But I was never with them for a long time without you, so I don't know what I would have done." She was quiet for a moment. "There were extenuating circumstances, though? He would have killed you."

"I believe so. But I know I hurt you and I would do anything to have not hurt you. Whatever you want to do to me, I deserve."

"I just want to go to bed. To sleep, Castle. Just to sleep."

When Castle went to sleep, he found Kate was on the edge of their bed, faced away from him. But when he woke up the next morning, she had one arm around him and her head was resting on his chest. He saw her eyes open. "Am I forgiven?"

She brushed her lips over his. "Yes. Of course you are. I know you love me as much as I love you. I just hope I never have to make that kind of decision. To sleep with another Rick."

They headed to the sub's wardroom for breakfast. Tatiana was sitting tucked into a corner and looked away when they came in. Once they had their food, Rick and Kate sat next to her. Kate smiled at Rick and gave him a kiss which brought a smile to Tatiana's lips.

"So Rick is forgiven?"

"Of course. And so are you. You did what you had to do." Kate waited a beat and added, "And nothing like that will ever happen, again, right?

Before Tatiana or Rick could reply, Montgomery came in, and walked over to them. "We may have found our Derrick Storm."

"Where? How? When?" The three said.

"On a C class Earth. We have an anthropological mission there and they were visited by a Dr. James Kilgore. Kilgore is one of Storm's cover names. The _Indiana_ is headed for C 17 now." As soon as he spoke, there was a quick flash of blue light. "Next stop Manhattan Island."

Four days later, Castle looked at the forested island they were approaching. "This is Manhattan? It's covered with trees. Huge trees."

"This is what Manhattan looks like here." Montgomery said.

"I can see smoke, sir." One of the lookouts said. "Someone's home."

The Hudson River was wider here than on their Earth, but the _Indiana_ was able to get quite close to Manhattan's shore. Ashore a group of people had gathered to welcome them. Montgomery, Namura, the Castles, Simone and Tatiana got into one LCU with a half a dozen SEALs while a dozen more SEALs got in another LCU.

When the LCUs came ashore and disgorged their troops, the people on shore began to look very nervous. "You're from our Earth?" Someone asked.

"Off of _USS Indiana."_ The SEAL leader said. "I'm Lieutenant Dan Daly. We're here looking for one of our people who sort of went astray."

A tall, sunburned and grey haired man came forward. "I'm Dr. Edward DeLuca. This is an anthropological expedition and you're looking for someone who "Went astray" with all those armed men?"

"He may have had help going astray. Have you seen any evidence of any other people on this world aside from yourselves?"

DeLuca shook his head. "There are thirteen of us here and old Dr. Kilgore off in the forest somewhere."

"Dr. Kilgore?" What can you tell us about him?" Daly asked, suddenly very interested.

"He's a medical doctor, not a PhD like the rest of us. He came with the first expedition some ten years ago, but when the expedition was withdrawn because of budget cuts, he insisted he had to stay behind and look after the Folk."

"The Folk? I'm sorry, but we weren't very well briefed on this Earth. Who are the Folk?"

"There are two separate races on this Earth. The Folk are the most human-like."

"Um, most human-like?" Daly asked. "How human like are they?"

"Let me introduce you to Nitza, she's the daughter of the head of the tribal council." He turned around. "Nitza, can you come here by me?" He turned back to Daly." She speaks excellent English, by the way. Most of the Folk do. "

Nitza came forward. She was blonde, beautiful and quite petite. Even in Beckett's four inch heels she wouldn't be more than five feet tall. Her only garment was a sarong type garment that covered her from her waist to her knees.

"Hello. I am glad to meet you all." She said slowly.

One of the SEALs whistled at her and got a very Kate-like glare from a Chief Petty Officer for his troubles.

"Quite human like." Daly said. "What's the other race look like?"

"Perhaps you should come to our camp and we can explain things better to you." DeLuca said.

Daly called the boat to explain what was going on and the headed into the trees. Castle was amazed at their size. "These things make sequoias look like matchsticks. How big are they?"

A grey haired woman answered. "Annabelle Clark, botanist. This stand runs about five hundred feet in height and around eighty to ninety feet in girth. There are bigger ones up river, of course."

"This is an old growth forest." Castle said.

"Old growth forest?" Simone asked.

"Trees, plants, need sunlight for photosynthesis. Taller trees block out the sunlight from getting to the shorter trees. Without sunlight, the shorter trees die out and eventually fall to the ground, becoming mulch. And all that's left eventually is the tallest trees, who hog all the sunlight."

"Where to the Folk live?" Tatiana asked. "I don't see a village."

"Look up. They live in the trees. It's safer."

"Safer from what?"

"The Night Folk, of course."

They stopped at the base of one tree. They all looked up, but could see nothing. DeLuca laughed. "You won't have to climb. They have an elevator for us."

Sure enough, a wooden box was being lowered on ropes towards the forest's floor. When it finally got to the bottom, they saw that it was big enough to hold all of them. They ascended slowly. "What powers this?" Rick asked.

"Human muscle power. We tried to get them to use a diesel engine, but they hated the noise and the exhaust. The Folk are a gentle people, not much into industrializing the planet. They do make wonderful handicrafts, though."

Clark, the botanist interrupted. "Make sure you keep your hands in from now on. We're coming to the Folk's defenses. They've grown poisonous vines around the trees to keep the Night Folk off. With modern medicine you might not die if you got cut, but it would be very unpleasant."

They watched as they passed a mass of vines with large thorns on them. "Those thorns are at least six inches long." Someone muttered.

"Just don't measure them, Barton." A CPO replied.

When they reached the branches of the trees the elevator car stopped. They found themselves on a wide wooden walkway that appeared to go all the way around the trunk of the tree. Stairs and ladders went upwards from there.

"Our quarters are just over here." DeLuca said, motioning them to the right. He led them to a room, cut off by cloth partitions that seemed to go halfway around the tree. "They had to make this especially for us since we're so much taller than the Folk. But let me show you the Night Folk." He grabbed a laptop, opened it and turned it on. He hit a few keys and there was the first Night Folk they'd ever seen.

"How tall is he?" Daly asked, there being nothing to judge height by, and the Night Folk was prone and apparently dead.

"The average is about five feet, six inches but they weigh upwards of two hundred and fifty pounds. As you can see, they look like they are descended from something like an alligator. They have a snout, maybe four to six inches long with sharp fangs to tear and rend flesh. Also they have scales like an alligator and claws on their feet and hands. They are bipedal and carnivorous. They especially like to eat the Folk. Oh, and they're nocturnal."

"The Night Folk aren't as socially or economically advanced as the Folk. This clan of the Folk has about five hundred people, run by a matriarchical council and is based on a half a dozen trees. There are bridges between the trees. The Folk weave cloth, use kilns to make pottery, do some metal working, all on a small scale. The Night Folk seem to run in extended families, maybe fifteen to twenty adult males and more women and children. Also, they're just starting to use crude tools, handily shaped rocks, tree branches, that sort of thing."

"The Folk ought to be able to flatten the 'gators." Daly said.

"The Folk are peaceful, but not pacifists. They make spears and blowguns and we've taught them to make and use bows and arrows. But when they fight off an attack by the Night Folk, they just let them go. Humans would track them down and kill them."

As they spoke, they could hear Folk coming up from ground level in the elevator. "It'll be dark in an hour or so. We can offer you fresh food for dinner."

Although food on the sub was good, they picked local food over their MREs.

Once the sun was down, everyone went to bed. Rick and Kate were given a small room with a mattress stuffed with some kind of down. Rick pulled Kate to him.

"Rick, everyone will be able to hear us."

Before Rick could answer, they heard a high pitched moan, followed by and equally high pitched scream. Soon the tree branches were shaking and moans and screams filled the night.

"I don't think that the Folk mind people hearing. When in Rome?" Rick said, sliding his hand under Kate's tee shirt.

"Do as the Folk do." Kate replied, putting her hand down his boxers to grasp his erection. "Is that for me?" She whispered.

"For you and no one else, ever again."

Many hours later the sleepers in the trees were woken by the sound of a rhythmic thumping. Rick and Kate got dressed hurriedly and went quickly to the bottom walkway. There they found Daly and his men, as well as the anthropologists and many of the Folk, who were armed now.

"What is it?" Kate asked.

"A whole bunch of the gators." Answered a SEAL. "One of 'em climbed up and he's using a club to bash the poison vines. There are about a dozen other with him. We can see 'em with NVGs."

"NVGs?" Simone asked.

"Night vision goggles." Someone replied.

"If a dozen of them get up here, there's going to be bloodshed." Daly said to DeLuca.

"We have two shotguns and some pistols. I'll go get them."

Daly stopped him. "We have a hell of a lot more than that."

"I hate bloodshed." DeLuca replied.

"One way or another, you'll have bloodshed tonight."

Deluca nodded.

"Okay, spread out. Hightower, you start the party by dropping the one with the club. Then everyone else fires." Daly looked around. "Everyone ready." That got a chorus of yesses. "Okay, send it."

Hightower, a sniper, aimed almost straight down and fired. That was followed by single shots from rifles and carbines, short bursts from machine guns and the soft pop of grenade launchers. It was over in less than a minute.

"It'll be noisy down there tonight." DeLuca said.

"Noisy?" Daly asked.

"Scavengers will fight over their bodies."

DeLuca was right, but everyone managed to get some sleep.

The next morning Daly and everyone else met with the council, composed of six women ranging in age from very old to middle aged. Daly explained their mission, which seemed to make little sense to the women, but they felt that if the strangers wanted to go wandering off, it was their business.

"Is all the forest like this?" Daly asked.

"How else would the forest be?" Asked one woman.

"Just very large trees with no underbrush or smaller trees. In other words, with plenty of room between the trees."

"For the most part. There are places where there have been fires and the tall trees destroyed, but there is not one of those places in…." She stopped.

"In about a hundred of your miles." Nitza said. "If I may address the council?"

"Anyone may address the council."

"These strangers have driven off Night Folk who would have killed and eaten us. In return, I would like to go with them and be their guide."

The middle aged woman smiled. "You have always been daring, Child."

"As you have taught me, Mother."

Doctor Clark, the botanist, spoke. "I should go with them as well. Nitza doesn't necessarily understand our ways or our technology."

DeLuca shrugged, then nodded. "Just be careful. We don't have enough people here to risk losing any."

"We have spare weapons, comm gear, medical supplies back on the _Indiana._ " Daly said. "We can bring some ashore for you. Help you out some?"

DeLuca nodded and Daly got on the radio to talk to the captain of the _Indiana._

That done, they moved back to the human's quarters to plan their next move. Daly gathered his people around him, as well as Nitza, Clark as well as the Castles and the two women with them.

"What can you tell us about your meeting with this Dr. Kilgore?"

"Not much." DeLuca replied. "About two weeks ago, he showed up with an injured Folk from this clan. He'd broken his arm and hadn't been able to get back here before dark. One way or another he'd been driven north until a clan not known to these Folk picked him up and took him to Dr. Kilgore."

"Where was this?"

DeLuca shrugged. "North of here. The young fellow was in pain and not sure of where he was headed. The Folk stay pretty close to home since they have to get back by dark."

"What can they tell us about Kilgore? A description?"

"Only that he was human. Very big. And he had a gun over his shoulder."

"What kind?"

"None of the Folk could tell you that. In fact, none of us would recognize one type or another."

"Anything else?"

"He did set the broken arm. He did it well."

Daly thought. "I figure well take two SEAL platoons and split 'em up between four LCUs. That way we can take spare fuel, ammo, food, batteries, etcetera and not be all jammed in. Riding in a tracked vehicle over rough ground can be tough."

"I should go with you." Tatiana said. "I can tell the difference between your Storm and that bastard Colonel Storm."

"I'll go with Tatiana. "Simone said quickly.

Rick and Kate exchanged glances. "We'll go, too." Rick said.

"Maybe five LCUs then."

Early the next morning the _Indiana_ submerged just enough to allow some more LCUs to swim out of the docking bay and head for shore. Three of them ran up onto the beach and parked by the main tree. Hundreds of the Folk came down as they had never seen such a sight before. As they watched the SEALs and sailors off loaded supplies for the anthropological team and then they loaded their own gear.

Rick, Kate, Simone, Tatiana and Dr. Clark were issued cammies, web gear, protective vests and weapons and ammo. All except Dr. Clark had carbines and pistols. As Dr. Clark had never fired a weapon before, she was issued a pistol and given a quick course in firearms safety.

Nitza, however, had flatly refused to wear either the camouflaged fatigues, the web gear or a protective vest. She was convinced to wear a shirt rather than go topless and eventually a leather belt was found for her to carry a knife, a first aid kit and a hydration system.

"Lot of good that knife will do her against a 'gator." A SEAL muttered.

"There's more than the Night Folk out there." Dr. Clark told him.

"McCall." Daly growled." You're in charge of Nixta. Which means you keep her alive. No matter what. Understand?"

A bulky young man with green face paint obscuring his features, but carrying a carbine with an underslung grenade launcher nodded. "Understood, sir."

Daly turned to Clark. "McCall's a newlywed. He won't try anything with Nixta. But I am glad she isn't going topless."

Rick walked over to get a better look at an LCU. It was boxy, with sloping sides and a rear ramp that dropped behind it for entrance and exit. A sailor sat on the floor, sticking some boxes under the troop seats and securing them. "Morning, sir. Want to look around?"

"Sure, if it's okay." Rick said.

"It's okay. I'm Petty Officer First Class Dave Jones. And I've already heard all of the jokes about Davy Jones locker. And I'm the LCU commander, so come aboard, sir."

"I've been in the troop compartment here. "Rick said. "But never anywhere else."

"Okay, sir, if you'll come with me. Behind the bulkhead in the right front here is the engine. To the left front is the driver's compartment. Up here, is the turret." It was a tight squeeze, but Rick and Jones got inside. "This is my station on the left and the gunner is on the other side. We have a thirty millimeter cannon as our primary weapon and a 7.62 millimeter machine gun co-axial. That means it's right beside the main gun. We carry a thousand rounds of main gun ammo and forty five hundred rounds for the machine gun. The folks in back also have 7.62 machine guns, so we can use their ammo if we have to. And this trip we're carrying more ammo in the bustle rack, behind the turret. Outside, sir."

"Do you expect that much trouble?" Rick asked.

"We always expect trouble and usually find it. Hey, you want to see something cool?" He held out his helmet to Rick.

Rick put the helmet on and found he could see everything outside of the LCU. Almost like he was outside. There was an outline of the inside of the LCU that he could see, however. "How do you do that?"

Jones laughed. "We have hundreds of tiny cameras embedded in the vehicle, even if one is knocked out, there's enough overlap so we can still see everything. We only have three of these helmets on board, since they're so expensive. The ones in back for the passengers only give about a 60 degree field of view."

"The passengers are the reason you have this thing, Jones." Daly said, coming into the LCU and sitting down. "We're ready to go. Are you?"

"Aye aye, sir." As Rick left the turret the gunner moved in as did the driver. Rick, Kate, Nitza and Dr. Clark sat on one side while Daly, his radio operator and two SEALS, one of whom was McCall.

"Head 'em up and move 'em out, Jones." Daly said.


	9. Chapter 9

I, Spy

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: The Force may be with me, but not Castle. Rating: M, in spots. Time: The future. After Season Eight, but before children.

 **Chapter Nine. Dr. Kilgore, I presume?**

The five LCU's left the Folk's village and headed north. They drove through what would have been Manhattan on their Earth and crossed the East River into what would have been the Bronx. Then they headed north along the Hudson River, hoping to find some trace of Dr. Kilgore, who they hoped would turn out to be Derrick Storm.

"Lieutenant Daly?" Dr. Clark called over the noise of the vehicle.

One of the SEALS moved over to show her how to use the vehicles communications system. "Lieutenant Daly?" She said again.

"Yes?"

"Nitza says this is about as far as her people have ever gone. Maybe fifteen kilometers. There's another tribe they trade with in about another ten kilometers. They might know something."

"Can she guide us there?"

Nitza shook her head and whispered to Clark. "She says her mother would never let her go. But she's been told they live right along the river."

They went another ten kilometers and stopped within sight of the Hudson. Daly put the LCUs in a rough circle, nose to tail with the turrets facing outward. Nitza, Clark and an escort of four SEALS walked around, hoping to see someone.

One of the LCU commanders got on the radio. "I've got movement in the trees, almost due north and in the lower branches. Maybe four or five. Could be the local Folk.

Nitza called out to them in her own language, but got no reply.

"They're moving away, but it looks like one is staying behind to keep an eye on us."

"Do the other Folk know about us?" Daly asked Clark over the radio.

"Yes. But exactly what they know about us, I don't know and I'm sure they've never even imagined something like these vehicles."

Daly thought it over. "We'll say here until tomorrow. If they don't come a calling by then, we'll head up river. Set up an NDP."

"NDP?" Kate asked Rick who shrugged.

"A night defensive position." Daly told them.

Rick and the women watched as the SEALs strung concertina wire between the LCUs. Outside of the wire they pounded metal stakes into the ground. They then attached olive drab devices of some sort to the stakes.

"What are they putting on the stakes?" Rick asked Jones.

"The rectangular things are claymore mines, a command detonated directional mine. It's a steel plate filled with C4 explosive and about seven hundred steel balls. Fire it and the balls fire like a gigantic shotgun. The round things are flares, both command detonated and used with trip wires. We use NVGs, but if we just want to scare some locals away, the flares are good enough."

About an hour later, Nitza and the rest came back in. "I am sorry Lieutenant Daly. I know there are Folk in the trees and I called to them, but I think they are afraid. Perhaps they will come tomorrow, perhaps not."

"Don't worry. This was a gamble to begin with."

"Why do you not have defenses for attacks from above?" Nitza asked.

"Will these Folk attack us?'

"More than just the Folk live in the trees. There are _soylven_."

Daly looked at Clark. "What are they?"

"Think of a mammalian spider about the size of a mountain lion. They live in the trees, but they've been driven away by the Folk. If they see some prey, they'll come down the far side of the tree, then jump and attack. All eight legs have claws, and they also have fangs."

Daly thought for a second. "Anyone who wants to sleep inside the LCU's can do so, but here isn't that much room to lay down inside. Or you might try to sleep under the LCUs. I'll have one of the LCU use their sensors to track anything in the trees."

All of the women got to sleep inside the LCUs. Rick tried to sleep under the LCU with Kate in it, but found there really wasn't room.

"Sleep next to the tracks." Jones suggested. "If the thing is going to come at us from ground level, someone should get it before it gets to you."

"Famous last words." Castle muttered, getting a laugh.

Castle was woken up by a burst of machine gun fire. He sat up, trying to grab his boots and his carbine at the same time. He heard a soft pop, and a flare burst overhead. "What happened?" He asked a SEAL who was running past him.

"Dunno." Was the reply.

He walked across the open space between the LCUs to where a group of people were standing. As he got there, Kate, Simone and Tatiana joined him, all armed. "What happened, Babe?"

"I don't know."

"We got one of those soylent things." Someone said.

" _Soylven."_ Nitza corrected.

"A big ass, nasty motherfucker." Another said.

"All right, children. It's dead." A CPO said. "If you want to stand around all night, I got some things that'll keep you occupied. Haul the damned thing off. I don't want the local carrion eaters all over."

The SEALs and sailors quickly got to work, but Rick and the women stayed inside the wire. "It is big." Rick said.

"We got lucky, sir." The CPO said. "The thing jumped from about fifty feet up and landed in the barbed wire. That held him up long enough for us to put a machine gun burst into him. If he'd gotten inside the perimeter….We'd have been in deep shit." He looked at the women. "Sorry, ma'ams."

"Really deep shit." Simone said.

"Deeper than deep shit." Tatiana said.

"Immeasurably deep shit." Kate concluded.

The CPO laughed. "Yes, ma'am."

At dawn one of the CPO's woke Daly. "We've had little people showing up in the trees ever since we got that eight armed thing. Ms. Nitza thinks a group are coming it to talk to us."

Everyone was awake and alert when a three women stepped out from behind a tree and began to walk towards them.

"Nitza, tell them about the flares. They're on trip wires. If they're on top of one when it goes off, they could get burned."

Nitza called out something in her own language to the women. The women replied, then there was a short back and forth between them. "They don't really understand what a flare is, but they understand they might be dangerous. And they do want to talk. The _soylven_ we killed has been attacking them. They've lost two dead."

"Any injured? Tell them we can provide medical assistance." Daly said.

"There are no injured. If a _soylven_ catches you, you are dead."

What followed was a long discussion about the death of the _soylven_. The local Folk seemed to be surprised that a man and not a woman was in charge, but given how strange the humans were, they shrugged it off.

"They want us to come to a feast tonight in honor of the death of the _soylven._ It would be a great humiliation to them if we didn't come."

Daly looked to Clark, who nodded. "They'd be humiliated. It would signify we didn't think they were worth saving from that beast."

"Oh, hell. I guess we can do some diplomacy tonight. Maybe we can pick up some information about Kilgore and what the land is like around here."

"The Folk don't go very far from their villages." Clark reminded him. "They need to get back by dark."

"Can't they go by boat? The river is right next door."

"There are dangers in the river as well."

The feast turned out to be barbecued _soylven_. One of the SEALs had a full bottle of barbecue sauce that he'd brought. It wasn't enough for the whole _soylven,_ but it did give the Folk a taste, which they enjoyed. The SEAL tried to explain the recipe to them, and the Folk's cooks thought they might have similar ingredients. With the Folk happy with the newcomers, Daly began to try to learn more about the country ahead of them.

"You need to talk to Mathle." One of the councilwomen said. "Someone go get him."

Mathle turned out to be an aged male who had once travelled many days away from his own village with a man much like the newcomers.

"Did he tell you his name?" Daly asked.

"Doo- toor?" Mathle said uncertainly.

"Doctor?" Daly suggested.

"Doctor." Mathle repeated. "He had weapon that made loud noise like you."

Daly picked up a carbine. "A weapon like this?"

Mathle looked at it uncertainly. "Yes." He said slowly.

"Or more like this?" Daly held up a sniper rifle.

Mathle frowned, then smiled. "Yes."

Finally Daly picked up a light machine gun. "Or was it like this?"

"Yes."

Daly shook his head. "Which direction is this doctor?"

Mathle shrugged. "Haven't seen for years. Could be anywhere."

"Where was he when you last saw him?"

"Waving goodbye." Mathle waved his hand.

"In what direction?"

"Up and down." Mathle waved his hand harder.

"If you'd like, I can ask him who's on first?" Castle said, leaning over.

Daly glared at Castle, but then smiled. "That would probably be as useful as what I'm doing." He turned to Mathle. "Thanks, you've been a great help. Go have some more food."

Mathle smiled hugely and headed for the food.

"What now?" Kate asked.

"We'll follow the river north. Our LCUs make noise, so the Folk should hear them for a couple of miles and come to see what we are. Maybe word will get to Kilgore, or Storm, if that's him. And if he wants to be found."

"And if he doesn't?"

Daly shrugged. "We can't climb every tree in North America and look for him, and he knows the territory a lot better than we do."

As the feast wound down, Nitza told Daly that they should be on the lookout for the Night Folk. "They will have smelled the cooking and will know there is food here."

Castle decided he'd sleep sitting up on the ramp at the back of the LCU that Kate and the other women were sleeping in, armed and ready.

A hand closed over his mouth. He struggled until he heard Jones' voice whisper. "You need to get up, sir. We have a bunch of heat sources head this way. Two groups. One to the east and one to the west."

Castle was a little disoriented. "Which way is which."

Jones pointed straight through the gap between the LCU Rick was in and the next one. "Right over there, sir. They're mostly behind the two big trees straight ahead. We sent a little mini-drone over to take a look. It's the Night Folk, probably going to hit us."

Castle clumsily checked his weapon and saw that his night vision goggles were working. He scanned the area in front of him and saw absolutely nothing.

"Babe, what are you doing?"

"Go back to sleep, Kate."

"Shit." Kate muttered. Rick could hear Kate carefully waking the other women up. Rick soon found himself joined by Kate, Simone and Tatiana, all armed and ready. Jones explained what was going on as best he could.

"When will they attack?" Tatiana asked.

"Beats me." Was the honest answer.

The attack was fast and the defeat of the Nigh Folk was just as fast. Castle heard some deep bellows coming towards him, but as he aimed his carbine, a flare went off at ground level. A dozen or so of the Night Folk were suddenly in bright light, which stunned them for a moment. Then there was he blast of a claymore mine and half the fearsome creatures were down. Weapons were firing all over and Castle put ten rounds into a target before he discovered it was a tree.

Then there was silence. "Cease firing, dammit!" He heard from several directions.

"What happened?" He asked,

"We waxed their asses, I think."

Castle could see bodies in front of him. One at least was moving. Then he heard a whistling sound. Jones looked up.

"The Folk are finishing off the wounded with spears. Gonna be no one left in a minute."

"They don't take prisoners?" Rick asked.

"The Night Folk eat their prisoners, so I guess not."

Rick got little sleep that night as predators came out to feast on the dead Night Folk. At dawn, all they could see were bones with some meat on them. Something that looked like a hyena grabbed what might have been a leg and ran off.

Daly, Nixta and Clark went off to say goodbye to the locals.

Daly came back to brief them. "We've been told that he next clan up river is more aggressive than is usual for the Folk, so we'll be real careful and ride buttoned up. Don't get out of the LCUs unless it's safe."

Then they were on their way.

After some ten kilometers, they began seeing single beings in the trees above them. Probably the local Folk.

"Whoa!" Daly called. "All stop. Everybody check around them. Check our six."

"What is it?" Rick asked.

"We have multiple heat sources ahead of us according to the thermal sights. Look like the Folk are waiting for us. We'll try to go around them."

The convoy of LCUs tried to go inland and around the Folk, but the Folk moved through the trees above them too rapidly.

"Okay, drive straight through. Keep going. No one shoots unless I give the order. If an LCU is stopped, form a perimeter around it. Everyone ready?"

Rick heard a series of affirmative replies and the LCUs took off. As soon as they were under the trees, a rain of weapons came down on them. Not just spears, but large rocks and logs. Rick felt like he was inside a tin can that was being beaten on. Eventually, however, they outran the angry Folk. After going another ten kilometers to be sure, Daly stopped and checked the area with the LCU's thermal sights.

"No heat sources, sir." Jones said. "I'd like to launch two drones. One to check this area and one to check our back trail to make sure they aren't following us."

"Do it."

Rick heard a clattering outside and wondered what the drones saw. In ten minutes, he knew. They had found nothing.

"Okay, dismount and check the exterior of the LCUs."

Damage turned out to be minimal. A cracked headlight lens, a couple of external cameras, a five gallon water can had a spear through it and a box of MRE's had been hit by a large rock and crushed.

Jones looked the MREs and the water can which were in his LCU's bustle rack. "No problem, Mr. Castle. Crushed MREs aren't any worse than any other kind and I can fix the water can with some hundred mile an hour tape."

"What?"

"Military duct tape, sir. It's just duct tape." Jones said with a laugh.

"Everybody back on board. We have company coming." Daly yelled.

After the attack, everyone was back inside at once. Daly had no time to circle the LCUs into a tight defensive formation before dozens of Night Folk were running at them.

"I thought they were nocturnal?" Daly said to Nitza.

"They are, unless they're being attacked. They're not in any attack formation, they're just…."

"Jesus fucking Christ!" Jones yelled. "They sure as shit are running. Look!"

Rick got his goggles pointed forward with the help of another SEAL and could see what the Night Folk were running from. They were big and looked like a cross between a tyrannosaurus rex, a kangaroo and Rick's worst nightmare. One of them caught a Night Folk and neatly snapped him in half, swallowing the upper half and then reaching down and gobbling up the lower half. In less than a minute, the Night Folk and the predators were gone.

"What were the big things?" Daly asked Nitza.

"Doolathans. They live by and in the river. They are one reason we don't use boats."

"Does the _Indiana_ , our ship, know about those things?"

Both Nitza and Clark shrugged, leading Daly to radio the sub with a report.

"Okay, people. Let's move out."

They had hardly gone more than a few hundred yards before they found an even larger predator snacking on the remains of a doolathan. "That thing's as big as we are." Jones said. "Bigger maybe."

"Look out!" Rick heard over the radio as something slammed into the LCU and the craft began moving with a rhythmic, rocking motion.

"What the hell is happening?" Daly yelled.

"Sir," Someone said over the radio, "I think one of the real big predators is trying to screw your LCU. We've got green and grey cammo paint so we kind of look like one of them. They're kind of blocky, too. He probably thinks your LCU is really hot lady….whatever."

Rick could hear laughter over the radio.

"Shoot the damned thing off of me." Daly roared.

"Sir, as big as that monster is, if we shot him, um, in the position he's in, you know, kind of doggie style, we'll have a hell of a time getting him off."

"He'll be getting off pretty soon anyway." Someone said anonymously over the radio.

The crew of the LCU sat there for a good ten minutes while the LCU was rocked back and forth. Finally the amorous monster was satisfied and left, probably smiling.

"Was it good for you?" Someone called.

"Look for a stream or something so I can wash the LCU off." Daly growled.

They did find a pond and cleaned the LCU off, to ribald remarks from all concerned. Then they were on their way again. Just before dark, they saw a spear stuck in the ground ahead of them. Attached to the spear was a piece of paper. Daly had his LCU pull up beside it and quickly got the paper. He read it:

To whom it may concern,

If you are friendly, I shall meet you ten kilometers to the north at the next village of the Folk. If you are not friendly, I shall not meet you.

Yours, sincerely,

James Kilgore, MD, FACS.

"So, we'll find out if our boy is really this doctor or if it's Storm. I sure as hell hope it is Storm." Daly grumbled. "Having my vehicle get assaulted by a….Nitza, what was that thing?"

"A shalloop. Actually, it should help us tonight. At least."

"Help us?"

"The Night Folk and the other nocturnal predators will smell the remaining sperm of the shalloop on the vehicle and assume there's a shalloop in heat about. They get very hungry and aggressive then."

Daly just shook his head, but they spent a very peaceful night.

The next morning after they had travelled nine kilometers, they slowed down and started looking around for the Folk's village.

"Dead ahead." Jones said over the intercom. "There's a whole bunch of Folk and one big dude in the middle. That has to be our guy."

Daly had the LCU's stop a good twenty meters away, then he dismounted his vehicle. "Ms. Beckov, you want to come with me and see which Storm, if any, this is?"

Tatiana quickly got out, followed by Rick, Kate and Simone. "We go where she goes." Kate said.

Daly looked over at the Folk. "He doesn't look like Storm, but Storm could be hiding. He does have a rifle over his shoulder and the Folk have their spears, and what look to be swords. Keep your weapons slung and we'll go over and talk with them."

The closer they got, the more it was obvious that Dr. Kilgore was not Derrick Storm. Daly stopped in front of the doctor and the others stopped behind him. "Doctor Kilgore, I'm Lieutenant Dan Daly, US Navy. Our ship stopped at the anthropological camp and they gave us a rough idea where you were. We're looking for a man named Derrick Storm, who apparently used your name when he brought an injured man into the camp."

Kilgore nodded. "Then I assume the gentleman with you is not the man I met here?"

Daly shook his head. "He's Rick Castle, from another Earth, as are the ladies with him. Is Storm here?"

Kilgore shook his head. "He left some five days ago. He did leave me his rifle and ammunition. I ran out of ammunition for my old rifle some years ago. He also gave me a first aid kit he had. Not much, but better than nothing. I have managed to have the Folk make some things for me, scalpels, probes and such. And I've been looking into local cures. I've found a local fungi that yields a mild antibiotic, much like penicillin. I'm hoping to strengthen it by crossbreeding."

"We can provide you with more ammunition and even some modern weapons for your friends here." Daly said.

"That would be useful. I've been trying to make a gun and ammunition. I've managed to get my friends to build me a flintlock muzzle loading musket, but I'm having trouble with making gunpowder. I know it's saltpeter, charcoal and sulfur, but I don't seem to be able to get the proportions correct."

"We can help with that." Daly was trying to get Kilgore to be cooperative. "Where did Storm go?"

"Go? He went off in a blue flash."

"Did you see what kind of transfer machine he used?"

"Oh, yes. It was a large silver one, worn around his wrist like a bracelet. It was very heavy."

Daly cursed. "He has the latest and best model. He must have stolen it as it's still being developed."

Castle frowned. "We were given much smaller ones by Earth One."

Daly shook his head. "I'd guess you were given locator devices to allow the transfer machine to lock onto you and pull you out. The one Storm has is our best. I hope it's our Storm that has it and not Colonel Storm. We are ahead of Demming's Earth with transfer technology."

They stayed with Kilgore for the day and then headed back to the _Indiana_ and then to _Indiana's_ home.


	10. Chapter 10

I, Spy

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: Oddly enough, I _still_ don't own Castle. Rating: M, in spots. Time: After season eight and before children.

 **Chapter Ten. Norfolk, Norfolk, It's a Wonderful Town.**

"Home, sweet home." One of the lookouts on the _Indiana_ said, looking through his binoculars.

All that Rick could see was a dark blur on the horizon. "That's Norfolk, Virginia?"

"Yes, sir. The main fleet base on the East Coast. Plus Newport News, Little Creek, Fortress Monroe….And, just about all of the land around Hampton Roads is a military town."

"What'll you do when you arrive?" He asked Captain Winton.

"Most of the crew will get shore leave. I'll be busy ashore as will some of my officers briefing everyone on this cruise."

"Not much to brief. You didn't find Storm."

Winton laughed. "We'll still have to have a big show and tell about what we did and didn't find. What will you and the ladies be doing?"

Castle shrugged. "No idea. Apparently Montgomery and Namura haven't gotten any orders yet. We're kind of hoping to go home."

Someone called to him from below. "Mr. Castle, Mr. Montgomery would like to see you, sir."

When Rick got to Montgomery's office, he found Kate, Simone and Tatiana were there already. They didn't look too happy.

"What is it?' He asked.

"I'm sorry, Rick. We asked if we could send you home, but command wants to keep you and present you and Kate as Mr. and Mrs. Storm. That way they think Demming's Earth will think he's back and hopefully they'll stop looking for him."

Montgomery tried to make this sound appealing. "We'll have a nice luxury condo for you, a couple of cars and a generous expense account."

"Allow you to remind you that I already have a luxurious place to live, several in fact. And I have some very nice cars, too. I also have enough money to pay my own way."

Rick glared at Montgomery until Tatiana spoke. "You also have some of Demming's people back on your Earth trying to kill you. And I think Colonel Storm would like to kill me after we messed up whatever his plans were for the uranium he wanted to mine in the Taklamaklin Desert. He might want to kill me anyway, even if he doesn't know about that. He's always felt that killing his enemies was best."

Rick looked at both Kate and Simone. Something passed between them. "Oh, hell." He muttered. He turned back to Montgomery. "So how do I become Derrick Storm?"

"We have several people who can brief you until you know his life better than he does. Now you should go and collect your things. We'll be in Norfolk in a few hours."

And in a few hours they were in Norfolk, being driven in a military mini-van by Petty Officer Jones, with Daly and several SEALs with him.

"We're your protective detail, Mr. Storm. You may as well get used to be called that. There'll be more people at your condo, too."

"A protective detail? Is that really necessary?"

"Demming would love to kill our Derrick Storm. So, in spite of the fact that this is a military own, you get a protective detail."

"Why does this being a military town make this different from any other place?" Tatiana asked.

Montgomery cleared his throat. "We've told you about some of the differences between our Earth and yours. About five percent of the people here, and in the European Union and the Japan, actually work at important jobs. They're the smartest, best educated, most imaginative, hardest working people around and they run a society that, thanks to computers and robots can provide enough goods and services to give everyone a nice, secure middle class life style. And they've convinced the other ninety five percent that if the top five doesn't run the economy and the country, the whole thing will collapse in chaos. Hardly anyone votes anymore, so the top five run things. They keep everyone else nice and comfortable and everyone is afraid to rock the boat."

"Except for the military." Daly said.

"Except for the military." Montgomery agreed. "They tried using a military consisting of mostly drones and it didn't work. So, they have to depend on people they consider their inferiors to protect them."

"They don't like us and we don't like them." Daly said.

Montgomery went on. "There are plenty of people who don't want to just sit around and vegetate. They are smart, but not smart enough to be in the top five. A lot of them come to us. So many, in fact, that we have a waiting list to enlist. There are local junior colleges that'll get you a degree in military science. Four year colleges, too. Plus we recruit auxiliaries from overseas. First we recruited them as scouts and translators, because they knew the territory. But, slowly but surely they expanded."

"But how does that make a military town different?" Tatiana asked again.

Daly pointed out of the car. "See the military police over here?" He pointed to an open topped vehicle with four armed, camouflaged soldiers in it. "There are no Federal, State or local police here. The police are all military. As are the courts. You commit a crime, you go before a court martial. All that applies whether you're military or civilian. The town is run by the Commander, Atlantic Fleets."

"You do have civilians here?" Tatiana asked.

"Some retired military and some civilian employees of the military. And some businessmen find it easier to do business in military town. We're basically a state within a state."

"It's hard to believe that the economy could provide all of that for everyone." Castle said.

Daly pulled out his laptop computer. "Let me get you a feed from the shipyard over at Newport News." In seconds a live feed came up. "This is our next carrier, _USS Bunker Hill_." The video showed robots of all sorts swarming over the ship, doing things that Castle didn't understand. "Your Earth's most recent aircraft carrier took about seven years to build from the time it was laid down to commissioning. The _Bunker Hill_ will take sixteen months." The screen changed. "This is a destroyer, _USS Preble_. A similar destroyer on your Earth would take two years plus to build and wouldn't be as technologically advanced. The _Preble_ will have taken four months to build."

"How do you pay for all this?" Tatiana asked.

"The US military is the only presence in most of the world outside of North America, Europe and Japanese Asia. We supply coffee from Central America, rare earths from Central Africa, uranium from the former Congo, diamonds from Namibia, all manner of goods. Plus we charge for convoying ships not going to North America who pass through dangerous waters, such as the Mediterranean. Basically, the five percent couldn't get along without us."

"Regrettably, we can't get along without the top five." Daly ominously added, "Yet."

The car pulled up in front of a building on Norfolk's waterfront. "Here we are." Montgomery said brightly. "You have the top four floors. Floors sixteen to nineteen. And the roof has a helipad for your use only. Floor sixteen is where your protective detail lives and where the kitchen is."

"All of us like to cook." Kate broke in.

"Oh, there's a kitchen for you as well in the living quarters, but if you have a party, you'll need a professional staff. Not just cooks, but bartenders and wait staff. The next floor is the formal dining room and ballroom."

"Just what kind of parties are we hosting?" Rick asked.

"Big ones. You're a celebrity, Mr. Storm. A celebrity." Montgomery went on. "The next floor is your living room, kitchen, game room and two offices. You also have a full bath on that floor. The top floor is your bedrooms, four to be exact and each has an attached full bathroom. We assume Mr. and Mrs. Storm will share a bedroom?"

"You bet." Rick said quickly.

They didn't pay too much attention to the first two floors, other than to note that each floor had more square footage than Castle's loft.

The third floor was huge and luxurious. All leather, dark wood and soft carpets, with a great view of Hampton Roads and the surrounding areas. The bedrooms were equally luxurious. "Kate, look at the size of that bed. We could play football on it."

"Touch or tackle?" She said softly, running her hand over his ass.

"Oh, touch, for sure."

"We're going to start on your briefing, Mr. Storm." Montgomery said, interrupting Rick and Kate's train of thought.

"Briefing?"

"On how to be Derrick Storm."

Three days later, Castle felt his head was full to bursting as he came into the living room, to find the three women reading their "legends" as their fake identities were called.

"I need a drink. I've spent twelve hours learning how to be someone I invented."

"Who was your girlfriend in college?" Kate quickly demanded.

"What?" Rick cried.

"Come on, Storm. Who was your girlfriend in college?"

Rick sighed. "Martine "Marti" Anderson."

"Why did you break up?" Tatiana asked.

"She got accepted at Harvard Medical School, a sure ticket to the top five. I didn't get quite so prestigious a place in grad school."

"What does she do now?" Simone asked.

"She's cloning hearts and changing their DNA to make them better. Pretty soon everyone will have a brand new heart waiting for them with zero miles on it."

The three women looked at each other. Kate spoke. "Okay, get a glass of wine and get one for us, too."

"And how have my wife, my wife's twin sister and her little sister doing today?" Rick asked from the wine cooler, describing their cover stories.

"Studying our cover stories."

Rick brought the wine to the three women. "So why don't you look as exhausted as I feel."

"Because our cover story…"Kate began.

"…is that we're from another Earth." Tatiana continued.

"…and all we have to say when asked…." Simone went on.

"…is, "Sorry, that's classified." Kate finished.

"Is that as freaky when we do it?" Rick asked.

"Freaky?" They said in unison, frowning.

"Forget it."

Two weeks later, Castle was standing in front of his mirror, looking at himself in his tuxedo and saying over and over again, "My name is Derrick Storm and I'm a spy."

He was interrupted by the three woman walking into the bedroom. He smiled at them. "Wow! Very patriotic. Kate in blue, Tatiana in red and Simone in white. The three woman were, indeed, wearing nearly identical floor length gowns in those colors. Kate's had a high Empire waist, Tatiana's was nearly backless and Simone's was cut low in front. Very low.

"How can you tell the difference between Tatiana and me?" Kate asked.

"Body language." Castle lied. In fact he'd seen Kate's dress when it was delivered earlier in the day.

"We'll have to work on that."

Rick smiled. "Work too much and I might mistake Tatiana for you."

"I'll quickly correct you." Tatiana said quickly.

"I'll correct you as well." Kate said with false sweetness.

Castle quickly changed the subject. "Where are we going to tonight, again?"

"It's a reception by the Commander of the Atlantic Fleets, Admiral Callan." Roy Montgomery said, sticking his head into the bedroom.

"Why the Atlantic Fleets. Isn't one enough?" Rick asked.

"There are three of them. The Second Fleet covers the North Atlantic, but it's mostly a training command getting ships ready to deploy to the warfighting fleets. These are the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean and the Fourth Fleet in the South Atlantic, which covers what's left of South America and West Africa. The Pacific Fleets are much the same. The Third Fleet is mostly a training organization, but covers the Eastern Pacific to include the Polar Sea, the Seventh Fleet covers the Western Pacific and the Fifth Fleet covers the Indian Ocean."

"They cover the whole world?" Tatiana asked.

"Plus there are two almost fleet sized task forces covering two AU Earths." Montgomery checked his watch. "We need to get going." He turned to the women. "You remember who you are?"

Kate nodded. "I'm Mrs. Storm, I should be able to handle that."

"I'm Tatiana Beckett, Kate's twin. Our mother, Johanna, was reading Russian literature when pregnant, hence the Russian name."

"And I'm Simone Renoir. I'm the younger sister of Kate and Tatiana. I'm a widow of a man named Renoir, but I'm afraid everything else is classified."

The reception was similar to hundreds that Rick had been to and he managed to fit right in, flirting mildly with the older admirals' wives and being polite to younger wives. Several young ladies tried to flirt with Rick, but were quickly chased off by a phalanx of Beckett women.

Even though he had to keep reminding himself he was Derrick Storm, the spy, he managed to stay in character. He thought he had it made when he noticed Montgomery headed his way with worried look on his face.

"Problem?" He asked Ray.

"Yes. General Richard Boyd, the chief of intelligence for the Mediterranean Command is here. He wants you to go on a mission, Mr. Storm. Come with me. Admiral Callan wants to see us."

Rick was relieved. Callan was one of the few people here that knew who he really was. Rick was sure he'd quash any ideas of Rick going on a mission.

He was ushered into a side room by Montgomery. Callan and Boyd were the only others there. Callan was a tall, distinguished looking man with enough medals on his chest for several admirals. Boyd was a stocky, dark skinned Marine brigadier general with what Rick would find to be a permanent scowl.

"What is it?" Montgomery asked.

"It's el Hadj Aleman." Boyd said, holding out his hand to Rick. "I'm honored to meet you, Mr. Storm."

Rick ran over his briefing in his mind. He had heard of this el Hadj Aleman, but knew little about him. "What is it?"

Boyd went on. "He's somewhere on the North African littoral and he's planning something big. It's not going to be some suicide speedboat after a merchant ship, or an attack on Tunisia by an infantry company. There's all kinds of encrypted radio traffic we've picked up, people in his organization moving in, weapons, heavy weapons, and I mean very heavy weapons being moved in. Artillery, surface to surface missiles, and surface to air as well. And we picked up a message from some Algerian tribal leader that used an old code we cracked. He said that the infidels would soon feel the heat of the sun in one of their cities. And we have evidence some damned Chinese warlord sold him a tactical nuke. We really need you, Mr. Storm. I've already asked MedCom to have you sent to handle this."

Admiral Callan frowned. "Mr. Storm has been down range with SEAL Team Sixteen, I'm not sure that sending him off so soon is a good idea."

"When we can get el Hadj Aleman? How can you not agree?" Boyd said.

"I'll talk this over and wait for the formal request from MedCom."

Ten minutes later, Castle, the three women and Montgomery were in Callan's office.

"Who exactly is el Hadj Aleman?" Castle demanded.

"El Hadj is an honorific meaning that the person has been on the pilgrimage to Mecca, which all good Muslims are supposed do. Aleman is a corruption of the French word for Germany. The man is named Viktor Brunner. He's German and a brilliant engineer. He should have made the top five in Europe, no sweat." Callan tapped his computer and brought up a photo of a grim looking blond man who was snarling at the photographer. "However, he couldn't control his temper and never got a job offer that would have put him in the top five percent. He walked into a company that'd turned him down and shot five people to death. He escaped and five months later, he showed up in the Caliphate as a convert to Islam."

"Most people in the Caliphate never study anything but the Koran. As a world class engineer, Brunner had no trouble rising in their ranks. He's been quite ingenious in devising ways to inflict damage on Europe." Callan began a slideshow of dead bodies and destroyed buildings.

"I'm not Storm, so I can't really help."

"You can help by just being around. Daly and his SEALS know you're not Storm, so you can travel with them and then just sit back when they go into action. When it's all over, you get the credit."

"Unless Daly and his men are all killed. Then everyone wonders why I'm still alive."

"Let's leave that part to us. In the meantime, we need to give you some training so you at least look the part when the people in MedCom see you."

"We need some training." Kate said quickly.

"All of us." Simone and Tatiana added.

Callan shook his head. "I appreciate your desire to stay with Mr. Storm, but we can hardly…"

"I'm a trained KGB agent." Tatiana said. "I can handle myself as well as anyone."

"I'm a homicide cop by training. I can handle myself too." Kate added.

"And I grew up on a very violent planet." Simone said last.

Callan gave the four a long, hard look. "We'll see what Daly and his SEALs have to say about your abilities. Then we'll see who goes. If anyone. I have no desire to get Mr. Storm here killed by accident."

Mr. Schiller was a warrant officer of many years' service and was in charge of checking their proficiency with weapons. As a member of Seal Team Sixteen, he was aware that Rick was not Derrick Storm, but made everyone stay in character. "Okay, this is the drill. You have a Glock M 13 pistol, 9mm, with two magazines holding seventeen rounds each. In front of you there are twenty four cardboard targets, roughly the size and shape of a person's torso and head. Each target will pop up for five seconds and then drop back. If you hit one, you'll see a flash and it'll fall. You have ninety seconds, and you'll fire until you either hit all of the targets or run out of ammo. Miss Beckett, you're first. Walk to the firing position and stay behind the yellow line."

When Tatiana had done so, Schiller called out, "Ready on the right, ready on the left, ready on the firing line. Commence firing."

As the targets popped up, Tatiana promptly knocked them back down. When she was done, hey heard her say, "Dammit!"

"What is it?" Kate asked.

"I used twenty five round to knock down the twenty four targets."

Schiller laughed. "Don't you worry about it, ma'am. Mrs. Storm, you're next."

Kate fired thirty one rounds and knocked down twenty two targets in the ninety seconds allotted to her. "Too much time sitting behind a desk." She said crossly.

Simone fired all thirty four rounds and hit nineteen targets. She said nothing.

Then it was Rick's turn. When he was done, he holstered his weapon and turned to look at the women. "I need to do some work."

"Mr. Storm, you need to do a _lot_ of work." He checked his clipboard. "Thirty four rounds fired and you hit sixteen targets."

"We only have two weeks until we go to the Mediterranean." Tatiana said.

"Like I said, a lot of work."


	11. Chapter 11

I, Spy.

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: Who thinks I own Castle? Wrong! Rating: M, in spots. Time: The future, after season eight but before children.

 **Chapter eleven. Into Africa.**

Rick Castle sank gratefully into the canvas seat of the aircraft that was taking them to _USS Ticonderoga_ , the flagship of the Sixth Fleet. "Thank god I'm finally away from that maniac Schiller. He was trying to kill me."

Kate leaned over and whispered in his ear. "Babe, he was trying to make sure you could stay alive."

He frowned. "I know that. I just feel like bitching."

Kate smiled. "Well, don't bitch. I happen to like you alive. Remember what Woody Allen said, being dead ruins your sex life."

Castle gave a very theatrical shudder. "Please. Don't talk about dead. Do you know how many times I was "killed" by Schiller?"

"Yes, but you were much better at the end."

"No, I wasn't. By the end I was so tired I could hardly give you more than three orgasms in a night."

"But what orgasms they were."

"Could you two knock it off?" Tatiana said, smiling.

"Yeah, get a room or something." Simone added. "Some of us had to make do with no man, just a finger."

"To quote Woody Allen again, "Castle said with a smirk, "masturbation _is_ sex with someone you love."

Simone stuck her tongue out at him.

They quieted down when a young sailor came back into the passenger compartment of the aircraft. "Okay, everyone. We're about to take off. Time from Sigonella to the _Ticonderoga_ will be about forty five minutes. From there, I understand you'll go by chopper to the _Montana._ You were all handed earplugs when you boarded, I suggest you use them. Any questions?" Getting none, the young man went back to the forward part of the CMV 22 B Osprey Carrier Onboard Delivery aircraft.

They landed aboard the _Ticonderoga_ and were escorted across the busy flight deck to a smaller helicopter. They were helped aboard and strapped in, then took off. Twenty minutes later, they began to descend over the sea.

"Where's the sub?" Tatiana asked, yelling at a door gunner.

He pointed down to the sea. In seconds she could see a sub rising to the surface. The sub hovered over the deck and one by one they jumped, being caught by some of the sub's crew. They were led below, introduced to Captain Mardikian, then taken to the SEALs section where they were greeted by Lieutenant Dan Daly.

"Good to see you again, sir and ma'ams."

"Good to be here, I guess." Rick said with as much enthusiasm as he could muster.

"You'll be happy to know that we managed to get you a bigger bed in your cabin this time. You and Mrs. Storm won't be so crowded this time."

The four just had time to drop their gear in their cabins when they had to be briefed by Lieutenant Daly.

"The jihadis are trying the old bait and switch this time." A satellite photo of an airbase came up on his laptop. "This is an old airbase, just barely in use. The Sixth Fleet keeps it pretty much inoperative with manned aircraft, drone strikes and regular surface to surface missile bombardments." A new photo popped up. "But they've brought up surface to air anti-aircraft and anti-missile missiles, as well as artillery and their own surface to surface missiles, and lots of troops. They're making this a real hard nut to crack."

Daly brought up a screen showing the entire Mediterranean. "To keep us from being able to concentrate on the one airbase, they've been raising hell all over the Med. They've fired cheap, unguided missiles at Sicily. Most were shot down, but two leakers got through. A manned aircraft went kamikaze on a freighter south of Crete and a mini sub attacked a ship in the Red Sea almost at the Suez Canal. And…lots of other stuff."

"Are we going to have to attack that airbase?" Rick asked.

"No." Daly smiled and brought up another photo. "We're attacking this. An old mansion about ten miles inland and not near anything. It's guarded by maybe twenty soldiers."

Rick smiled back. "So the airbase is a red herring. Everyone worries about it, but no one worries about the unimportant wrecked mansion."

"Correct, Mr. Storm. We got a small drone over the mansion. It picked up radiation. The nuke is there. How they plan to deliver it. We don't know, but if we can destroy the nuke, it won't make any difference."

Shortly after sundown, the _Montana_ rose to periscope depth. The SEALs and Castle and the women went on board and headed for the beach.

"Why don't we just ride the LCUs all the way to the wrecked mansion?" Simone asked.

"They keep the coastline under surveillance. Some radar, some cheap Chinese ground drones but mostly a lot of locals with AKs and a flare gun. They'd see the LCUs and send up a flare. Then everyone would come running. Everybody over ten years old around here carries an assault rifle and they have lots of RPGs, rocket propelled grenades, and other anti-armor weapons. We'll stop underwater and swim to the surface. You'll hide in the dunes with a protective detail and the rest of the team will hit the villa, knock out the nuke and pick you up. Nothing to it."

Castle remembered a line about no plan ever withstanding contact with the enemy.

It went just as Daly had said, they swam ashore and Castle and his group hid in the dunes. Daly and the rest hadn't been gone for five minutes when they got bad news. "We have a large group of jihadis coming up the beach."

"Are they looking for us?" Someone asked.

"No, they're making too much damned noise to be anything but a bunch of locals wandering around looking for trouble. But groups are breaking off and heading inland. We have to go." Said Petty Officer Juarez, who was in charge. "We'll contact Daly and tell him we're joining him."

After the radio call, they moved a half a kilometer inland. From there they looked back and saw a group of maybe twenty men sitting just where they had been and apparently in no mood to move.

Once they caught up with Daly, they changed their plans. "We'll all go to the wrecked mansion. Mr. Storm and his team will stay back while we hit the place. I've contacted the _Montana_ and they'll send all of their LCUs to come get us. Juarez says the people between us and the sea are only armed with assault rifles, no anti-armor weapons. When we hit the mansion, they'll head this way and the LCU's will catch them from behind."

Once at the old mansion, they split into three teams. One team was to keep an eye on Castle and the women so they didn't get hurt. The second team was to break into the back of the building where it was dark. The third team covered the front of the place to shoot anyone who ran out the front.

PO Juarez along with Castle and the rest got to the top of the tallest dune in the area. "We'll be able to see anyone coming towards us from the beach from here and have a good look at the fight." Juarez whispered.

The area below them was suddenly lit up as the SEALs fired a rocket into the back door, giving them access. Below, they could see the SEALs rushing towards the house and rushing through the smashed back door. As soon as they were inside, they could hear gunfire erupting. Then they heard lots more gunfire.

"Something's wrong." Juarez said. "That's way too much gunfire for the people who are supposed to be in that place."

Castle leaned in to hear the chatter coming in on Juarez's radio. He couldn't understand most of the military code words and slang, but it seemed obvious that Daly and his men were in trouble.

"Daly's ordered the second team to go in through the front to try to take some of the pressure of him." He looked at Castle and the women. "Will you be okay if I leave someone with you? I need to get in there."

Castle looked at the women. "We'd all be safer if we stuck together. Those guys on the beach will be headed this way quick. And anyone else in the area."

Juarez swore. "Okay, we all go. But you stay behind my team."

As they ran down the slope of the dune and to the back door, someone fired a burst at them. One of the SEALs fired a grenade at the muzzle flash and the weapon was silenced. They stopped once inside and found themselves in what had probably been a kitchen. There were several corpses on the floor. One of them was a SEAL.

They pushed through the house until they found Daly and his radioman. "Good news and bad news. The good news is we've got almost…." He was interrupted by an explosion above them that sent plaster and insulation raining down on them. "Correction. We got all of them. The bad news is we'll be having company. _Tico_ put a drone over us as soon as it hit the fan. We've got maybe seventy five people headed this was from the beach. Worse news is that there's maybe a hundred more headed to us from the east. All look like local militiamen, so they'll be armed with the family AK 47 and maybe the village machine gun. Nothing heavier. But they'll both get here before the LCUs. We'll have to fort up and hold them off. And the worst news of all, there's no nuke here. They must have moved the damned thing, or something."

While Daly went off to set his defense, Castle looked around. He walked back into the kitchen and saw a coffee maker, a really nice one with a package of coffee beside it. The label was in Arabic, but the scent when he put it to his nose was heavenly. The three women would love this, he knew. He picked up the coffee and started opening the cabinets, looking for filters and cups. He saw a box of filters in aback and reached for it. All of a sudden the floor under him fell away and he was sliding down a ramp.

He came to a sudden stop facing a blond haired man who had him covered with a pistol. _Shit! I found al Hadj Aleman._

"What are you doing here?" The German demanded.

"Who were you expecting?" _Really dumb answer._ He thought.

"Did you betray me, Colonel Storm?"

"I came to save you. Why else would I be here?"

"With the infidels?"

"It's not my fault they came here, too."

El Hadj laughed. "I'm afraid it's too late for me." The man actually giggled. "It's too late for all of us. I've started the countdown on the bomb. It'll detonate in less than thirty minutes." He giggled again and stepped back to show Castle what looked like an artillery shell.

"Turn the damned thing off." Castle demanded.

"That can't be done, my friend. It can't be stopped and it's tamper proof." He gestured to his right. "However, I have someone you might enjoy for your last half an hour on Earth." There, tied to a chair, naked and beaten, was another Kate Beckett. "She says her name is Kate Rodgers and that she's an doctor. I'm afraid she's not the one you wanted, but I'm sure she can be entertaining."

"I'm sure I'll be entertained." Castle turned and shot el Hadj in his gun hand, causing blood and bone to fly as well as his pistol. He put two more rounds into the man's knees, then dragged him as far from the bomb as he could.

Castle looked around desperately, and finally saw ladder leading upwards. He climbed up and opened a trap door in what had been a bedroom. "Hey, I found the bomb and el Hadj, but the damned bomb is set to go off in less than thirty minutes."

That brought Daly and one of the SEALs running. They dropped into the basement and headed for the bomb.

"Hey, someone help me get Beckett untied. She's hurt." The three women came down the ladder and untied the other Beckett. "If we pull from the top and you push from the top, we can get her upstairs." Kate said, already climbing up.

Daly and the other SEAL came up right after them. "We can't do anything about the bomb. We don't have an EOD specialist and el Hadj won't cooperate. We have about twenty two minutes. Then, boom. We zip tied el Hadj to a pipe so he won't try to kick the bomb or something."

"The LCUs are only five minutes out. They went right through the people on the beach." The radioman said.

"Okay," Daly said, "As soon as the LCUs get here, we run to them. We'll take the wounded and the dead if we can." He turned to the radioman. "Let the LCUs know were in deep shit here and they'd better hurry."

Just as he finished, there was a burst of fire from outside. "The jihadis from the east are here. And they're mad as hell."

Castle and the women were put in the center of the house, where they would hopefully be safe. Rick wasn't worried about people outside with guns, it was the nuke under his feet he worried about. "How good do you think the guys who made the trigger on that thing were?" He asked Tatiana.

"We'll find out one way or another."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

"Hey! The LCUs are here. I can see them." Someone yelled.

"Listen up, people. Start moving to the back of the house. Machine gunners, go to the east side of the house and make sure the jihadis think we're still all fighting them. When the LCUs get here, we move out. Leave no man…or woman, behind. We take our dead with us."

Rick found himself in the kitchen jammed in with a bunch of SEALs and the women. He somehow had gotten the job of carrying a dead SEAL with two others. He could see Kate and the others, though.

The LCUs roared up next to the old villa, firing in every direction it seemed. Everyone poured out the back door, screaming and firing. The people carrying the dead quickly fell behind, but at last Rick was at the ramp of an LCU, trying to maneuver the dead SEAL inside. "He's in." Someone yelled.

"Wait! Where's Kate and the rest?" Rick yelled.

He was dragged bodily inside. "The three of 'em made it to another LCU. We gotta go. We got about seven minutes."

The LCUs churned through the sand as fast as they could go. Castle kept looking at his watch. "We've go about a minute to go. How far from the shore are we?"

"A couple of clicks." The man next to him said.

The last minute ran out and Rick let out the breath he'd been holding. "Maybe the timer was bad."

"We can have the task force blast the place to rubble and then make the rubble bounce." Someone said.

They shot by the jihadis left on the beach and drove into the water.

"We're diving as deep as we can go. The water will help keep us safe from blast and radiation."

Rick smiled. "I wouldn't worry, if it hasn't gone by now…"

He was interrupted by a horribly bright flash of light, then the LCU rolled through the water like an amusement park ride, followed by a noise like a million thunderclaps.

"Spoke too soon, sir." The SEAL said, grinning at Rick.

"Where are the other LCUs? Where's Kate? Is she okay?" Castle yelled.

"Sir, it'll take a couple of minutes for things to settle down. I'll let you know as soon as I can. Those are our people out there."

"How are we?" Someone asked.

"Still alive, stupid." Another replied,

"We're twenty fathoms down, damn near to the sea bottom. No leaks, everything is okay. Now shut up and let me do my job, dammit." Came over the intercom.

The next few minutes were among the longest in Castle's life. But finally, "Okay, everybody is out there and doing fine. We're headed home, people."

Castle could hardly wait to get out of his LCU and rush to Kate, giving her a hug and a long kiss. They stopped when the SEALs began applauding them. Both blushed and pulled back from each other.

"And I thought that nuke was hot." A passing SEAL said.

"It's nothing compared to Kate." Castle shot back.

Everyone was taken to be debriefed. Castle sat in a chair with Kate on his lap. "The third nuclear weapon used in wartime and I was there."

"Three?" PO Jones said, raising an eyebrow. "There were five in the war between what used to be Pakistan and what used to be India."

"The explosion in the old North Korea may have been part of a coup attempt or just an accident." Daly added." Another two in the Chinese Civil Wars, plus…"]

"Okay." Rick said quickly. "That's enough."

Early in the morning, they got a briefing showing a satellite view of the blast and then a photo recon drone's real time video of the remains of the area. The whole area that had been sand was now a glassy crater with the sand dunes blown away for several kilometers. Video from other drones further away showed people streaming away in vehicles and on foot.

Daly spoke. "Most of those people are dead and don't know it yet. They've been exposed to too much radiation to survive. Given the primitive state of the Caliphate's medical facilities, even those who have cancers that would be treatable in North America or just across the Med in Europe, will die from lack of modern medical care."

"Couldn't we help somehow?" Kate asked.

"No. Sorry, but if any of us infidels tried, we'd be killed. And even Muslims living outside the Caliphate are considered heretics. If we dropped medicines in by parachute, or anything else, they'd be destroyed."

"How did the world end up this way?" Castle asked quietly.

"You can read the history books if you want, Mr. Storm. But it might not do you any good. We can tell you what happened, but we're really not too sure why."

Daly looked around at his troops. "You all did good, people. Chow time."

Castle ate with his wife and the other women. They had hardly finished when a sailor advised them that Mr. Montgomery and Mr. Namura wanted to see them. They went off to find the two.

"Please sit down." Ray Montgomery said. "I have news about Mrs. Rodgers, the woman you rescued."

"Shit!" Castle said. "I'd forgotten all about her. How is she?"

"Beat up, but not as badly as a lot of people who've fallen into the Caliphate's hands. We surfaced just long enough for a helicopter to take her to the _Ticonderoga_. From the _Tico_ a COD bird will fly her to Naval Base, Rota, Spain. We'll stabilize her and treat her, but keep her unconscious. We don't want another Earth knowing about alternate universes. She'll wake up on her own Earth, with vague memories of being kidnapped by Islamic militants. She'll was unconscious for her rescue and treatment, so she'll be a mystery for a while and then gradually this will fade away. The medicines we will give her will get rid of the bad memories."

"Do you know if Mrs. Rodgers was married to the other me of that Earth?" Castle asked.

"Luckily, Tatiana thought to grab her purse when we were pulling her out of the basement. She's a ME in New York. Apparently Rick Rodgers has written a very successful series of novels about a tough and brilliant medical examiner who fights crime."

"Don't anyone tell Lanie about that, or she'll want her own series of books." He joked.

"When do we get out of here?" Kate asked.

"Not for a while, I'm afraid. Losing their nuke has seriously enraged the Caliphate. All of the missiles and artillery, aircraft, suicide bombers and what not, they had assembled to distract us for whatever they were going to do with the nuke is being shot at us now. The task force here in the Western Med is busy fighting. The _Montana_ is doing life guard duty near the shore, in case we have to rescue any downed pilots. We could be here for a week."

They were off the North African coast for eight days. At first, Castle had hung around the Combat Information Center to watch the action. But the CIC became boring after a while. It was like a big, slow moving video game played in impenetrable militaryese. When the _Montana_ surfaced to pick up a shot down pilot, he had gone to the sail to watch with the lookouts. But watching a man get hauled out of the water was not that exciting. He went below to Kate.

Finally, things quieted down and the _Montana_ headed north again. Then Montgomery called the four of them to his cabin. "We have some news. The transfer device that our Derrick Storm is using has a built in tracking device, but it's rather short ranged. But we do know which Earth he went from here, but not precisely where he is. Let me show you."

As Montgomery ran the video on his laptop, Castle's heart sank. "Shit! We've been there before."


	12. Chapter 12

I, Spy

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I'm positive I don't own Castle. Rating: M, here and there. Time: The future, after season eight but before kids.

 **Chapter Twelve. It's Déjà Vu All Over Again.**

"Let's make sure before we say anything, babe." Kate said. Rick frowned, but watched the video. "How was this taken?" She asked.

"A drone recon bird." Ray said. "It also dropped a couple of ground recon drones."

Castle saw something familiar and nodded. "Watch this."

They saw a herd of elephants walk towards a river bank infested with alligators. The bull elephants tore trees out of the ground with their trunks and used them to batter the alligators until they fled. Then the elephants bathed and drank in the river.

"We were on this Earth. Sent by the Earth One people to try to rescue an Alexis Castle, not mine, but another one. We had to rescue a whole bunch of Alexises on the way. This was one of the places we were sent to. According to the Earth One people, a couple of hundred thousand years ago, some aliens came to that Earth and made all of the animals smarter. Maybe bigger and meaner as well. Sort of like _2001._ "

"You mean the movie by Francis Ford Coppola?" Montgomery asked.

"Francis Ford Coppola? Based on the book by Arthur C. Clark?"

"Of course."

"Well, anyway the animals got so smart and tough they killed off humans. We got to travel up the Mississippi on a Pibber, a PBR, Patrol Boat, River. You know, like in _Apocalypse Now_?"

"What's _Apocalypse Now_?"

Castle shook his head. "You're going to have to get me a movie DVD catalogue or something."

"No porn, babe." Kate warned him.

"You know the only porn I watch is the stuff we shoot in…." Seeing her look of shock, he stopped. "Um, that is…."

"Way too much information." Simone said.

"Or not enough." Tatiana said.

"Would you be willing to help us since you do know the area?" Montgomery said deferentially.

"We wouldn't be going in a small boat, would we? We'd go in the _Montana_?"

Montgomery shook his head. "It's way too big. We'll use a destroyer and a frigate. When the river gets too shallow for the destroyer, you'd go onto the frigate and continue the mission."

"What exactly are destroyers and frigates?" Simone asked.

Montgomery typed something into his computer and got another video. "A destroyer is about ten thousand tons, a bit over five hundred feet long and has a draft of a bit over thirty feet. They have two five inch railguns, she carries around a hundred missiles of various sorts, depending on her mission, a couple of twenty five millimeter guns and lots of 12.7 and 7.62 millimeter machine guns. She also carries two helicopters and various drones, again depending on mission."

Montgomery went to another video. "Frigates are smaller. A shade over four thousand tons, four hundred feet or so in length and her draft is twenty two feet. Weapons are one five inch rail gun, fifty plus missiles, type and amount depending on mission, two twenty five millimeter guns, plus machine guns, and two helicopters and some drones. They also carry rigid hull inflatable boats and they may carry something like the pibber you mentioned for this mission."

"Sounds safer than the boat we were in the first time." Kate said.

"I'll go. There's no need for…" Rick began.

"I go where you go, babe."

"Tatiana has no knowledge of this planet and…."

"And I'm going with you." Tatiana broke in.

"Me too." Simone added.

"You know, some of you could listen to me sometime." Castle griped.

"I listen to you all the time, lover." Kate said, winking at him.

"You listen, you just don't pay attention." Rick grumped.

They found themselves in what would have been the Gulf of Mexico on their Earth, heading for the Mississippi River. This Mississippi had a much wider delta than the on back home, going almost to Texas in one direction and nearly to Alabama in the other.

The two ships were crowded. In addition to the crews, six boats, a bit larger than their old pibber were on board, along with their crews, four on the destroyer, the _USS John Basilone_ and two on the frigate, the _USS_ _Ira Hayes._ They also carried more drones, both aircraft, underwater craft and land vehicles, and the maintenance crews and operators for them. On the other hand, Mr. and Mrs. Storm got a stateroom with a double bed for themselves. Simone and Tatiana shared a stateroom that was smaller.

For a short part of the trip, they'd have a third ship with them, a ballistic missile submarine, a "boomer", in Navy slang. The boat was one that had been modified to put satellites into orbit rather than fire ballistic missiles. A large part of the crew of the crews of both ships had gathered on the upper decks to watch the missile launch. Rick and the three women watched as well.

"Quite a fireworks show." Rick commented to Lt. Daly.

"Yeah, but you don't want to be around for the ones that explode."

"Point taken. How long before we go up river?"

"Tomorrow sometime, probably. We have to wait until the satellites achieve a stable orbit. One of them is a geosynchronous orbit some twenty three thousand mile up so it'll stay right over us."

Once the fireworks were over, the sub departed and the two remaining ships sailed in a lazy circle, just killing time. The sailors went back to whatever they had been doing and Rick, Kate and Simone briefed Lt. Daly and his team on all they had seen on this Earth the last time they were there.

It was nearly noon by the time they determined that the satellites were all in the proper orbit and functioning properly. At the same time, the sonar operator caught something and called to Captain Brodsky, the _Basilone's_ commanding officer and the CO of their little task force. "Sir, I'm picking up a disturbance on the sonar, about fifteen thousand meters dead ahead. I can't be sure here, but it sounds like it could be whales. But big whales."

Brodsky nodded. "Okay, we'll give them plenty of room. Keep me advised."

Rick and the three women were on the bridge when the first of the whales was seen.

"Whales, all right." Someone said, "Killer whales and very big ones. Bigger than I've ever seen."

"They seem to be ignoring us." Tatiana said.

"Good." The captain said. "I doubt if one of those things could sink us, but we don't want to get damaged."

"Sir," the sonar operator called, "something really big headed to the whales. Now the whales are turning towards the second target."

Brodsky, as well as Rick and the women, moved to the side of the bridge to see better.

"Jesus H. Christ!" Brodsky said.

A huge green head attached to a very long neck reared up out of the water, reached down and picked up a whale and bit it in half. The other whales went into a feeding frenzy, but were not that successful. The huge green beast moved rapidly through the water, moving its head, filled with massive teeth and snapping up whales and chomping right through them. They saw some more of the beast when a whale bit into a huge front flipper and hung on. The green monster slammed his two front flippers together, stunning the whale, which fell off.

Soon the battle was over and the killer whales fled. The huge beast began to eat the floating whale carcasses and paid no attention to the two ships.

"Did you see anything like that upstream?" Brodsky asked Castle.

"No, and it's possible those are salt water creatures. But the fresh water killers are just as dangerous. I think swimming parties are a no no."

"You think so?" Kate muttered sarcastically.

"We have a channel through the Mississippi Delta onto the main river from the satellites, sir." The comm officer said.

"Let me see it." Brodsky studied the satellite video and photos that had been sent down. "According to this, we'll have to go damned near to Alabama to get to this channel. I want plenty of daylight when we go through the channel, so we'll head for there and launch some aerial drones and take a look see and then head up tomorrow morning. _Hayes_ will precede us since we can pull her off a sandbar or whatever a lot easier than she can pull us off."

That night as others worked hard getting ready to go up the river, Rick, Kate, Simone, Tatiana and Montgomery ate with Captain Brodsky in the crowded wardroom of the _Basilone._ Rick couldn't help but notice that although they attracted some attention, the other officers seemed to be reluctant to make eye contact with any of them.

"These are odd sailors, Captain. I'd have thought that the unmarried men would be flirting with Simone and Tatiana, if not Kate. They can't all be married."

Brodsky laughed. "Your reputation has preceded you, Mr. Storm. No one wants to offend the legendary Derrick Storm by flirting with his wife. Plus, rumor has it that the ladies are all your agents and are cold blooded, highly trained killers who could dispatch a whole SEAL platoon without breaking a sweat. And there's also a rumor that you married all three of them in some barbaric ceremony on some far off Earth. I'm afraid your ladies are frightening my officers terribly."

"That's a shame. Should I…"Rick began.

"No. They can chase women when they're on shore. Here, I want them focused on their jobs and nothing else."

Tatiana shrugged. "Shipboard romances never last anyway. " Then she glared at young man who was looking at her and reached below the table as if to draw a weapon. The young man quickly looked away.

The next morning the two ships started through the Mississippi Delta preceded by two aerial drones. They sailed slowly with lookouts everywhere. On either side of them were swamps, filled with trees. Rick saw what might have been an octopus looking around a tree trunk. He could see one of its arms splayed out in front of it. He guessed it was twenty feet long and very thick. Further one, he could see two shadowy somethings keeping up with the ships until the trees thinned out, and they stopped. He heard, but did not see something on the other side of the ship that sounded like a fight between at least two large beasts.

Finally, they came out of the swamps into the main channel of the Mississippi itself. The river, lacking the levees of their own Earth was wider and in many cases deeper.

"I can't believe we sailed up here in a little pibber. "Kate whispered to Rick.

"I'm not thrilled were sailing back up in a destroyer." He whispered back. "But I'd go anywhere with you."

"Charmer." She said, giving him a quick kiss.

They found that they were getting readings from Storm's portable transfer device, but all they could tell was that it was somewhere ahead of them. They headed upstream.

"The drone has something." The drone operator reported.

"Is it our target?" Brodsky asked.

"No, sir. It's a bird."

"So?"

"It's the size of the bird, sir. It looks to be about the size of a small aircraft."

"Is it any danger to us?"

"No, sir. I have the drone over it, looking down. It's about two miles out and headed our way, though."

"Tell the lookouts to keep an eye out for it. Something that big could damage us."

Castle, Kate, Simone and Tatiana looked for the bird.

"There it is." Tatiana said. "He's diving and…." The bird swooped down and grabbed a large fish from the water, then climbed and headed for shore.

"Oh shit." Castle pointed upwards. "It's one of those poisonous butterflies." A monstrously huge butterfly in psychedelic colors moved slowly over the river, its colors attracting every eye for miles. The large bird dropped the fish on the river bank and soared out over the river, getting above the butterfly.

"Watch this. That butterfly has some kind of poison sacs that'll spray poison all over than bird. The bird is dead meat."

As the bird approached the butterfly, the butterfly flipped onto its back, getting ready to spray poison into the bird's face. But the bird skidded sideways in the air, and the poison missed. One of the bird's claws did rip into the butterfly's wing, damaging it. The bird dove towards the river, building up speed and then swooping up above the butterfly. The bird dove again, but pulled up just as the butterfly shot a stream of poison at him.

"The bird is trying to get the butterfly to use up all of its poison. That'll leave it defenseless."

The bird now circled the butterfly, feinting at it and making it shoot more poison. The bird did manage to damage its opponent's wing again and the butterfly began to drift slowly towards the river. With the butterfly concentrating on keeping airborne, the bird had a chance. It attacked and slashed at the butterfly with its talons. The butterfly fell a hundred feet into the river and began to sink. Then something rose quickly out of the river and pulled it down.

When it got dark, the ships moved more slowly up the river. Several times something bumped them, but it didn't look like anything was big enough to do them any damage.

Rick and Kate were sound asleep when the gunfire woke them. They pulled on their clothing as quickly as they could and looked out of their cabin. A sailor was passing by with an assault rifle over his shoulder and web gear full of magazines around his waist.

"What's going on?" Rick asked.

"We're being attacked by the stern." He rushed off.

"We'd better go try to help." Kate said.

They made it to the helicopter hangar to find one of the SEALs handing out weapons and ammunition to the sailors. Rick and Kate got in line and saw Simone and Tatiana ahead of them.

"Simone, what's going on?" Rick called.

"We're being attacked by something."

"What?"

"Crabs. "Replied the SEAL. "Huge god damned crabs."

They got to the helo deck and were directed to the port side. Just as they got there, a giant crab, a good six feet from claw to claw started pulling itself onto the deck. Rick and Kate both fired and he crab fell back.

"How the hell can they climb the sides of the ship?" Rick asked. "They're steel with nothing to grab onto."

When they got to the railing, they found out how. There were hundreds of crabs in the water around them. The crabs began climbing on top of the other crabs and soon the mass of crabs could reach the decks over the bodies of the other crabs. Rick and Kate began to fire into the mass of struggling crabs. They were soon joined by more sailors and then the SEALs began to fire machine guns and grenades into the mass below them.

Eventually, the mass of dead crabs brought more predators who began fasting on the living and dead crabs. The crabs left, leaving a dozen or more of their kind dead on the ship's deck.

"Crab cakes, maybe?" Asked a sailor.

"Not from these." An officer replied. "We have no idea whether they'd be good eating or fatal to us. Toss 'em all overboard."

Rick and Kate want back to bed. She curled up in her husband's arms. "You take me to the most interesting places." She said sleepily.

"Remind me to take you to a seafood place where the seafood doesn't want to eat us, though."

Kate smiled and was asleep.

When Kate woke up the next morning, something was different. She listened and then woke Rick. "Get up. I don't think we're moving."

"Do you think we're run aground?"

"There's just one way to find out."

Rick stuck his head out of their cabin. Two sailors we're working on some piece of machinery in the passageway. "Did we run aground or something?"

"No, sir. We've stopped. Some kind of trouble ahead. The _Hayes_ is taking a look."

Convinced that a disaster wasn't afoot, they took a shower and got dressed. They sat with Captain Brodsky and had breakfast in the wardroom.

"Why are we stopped?" Kate asked.

"There's a huge sand bar up ahead. We can't get the _Basilone_ through it and maybe not even the _Hayes._ We have aerial and subsurface drones looking for a passageway."

They were interrupted by a burst of machine gun fire. In seconds Brodsky was getting a report on the radio. "A really big octopus. Big enough so that one of his tentacles reached to the helo deck. Almost grabbed someone before a machine gunner lit him up."

"I do take you to the most interesting places, don't I?" Rick said.

Kate stuck her tongue out at him.

After breakfast they went on deck to look around. They were surprised to find that they were only a couple of hundred yards from the eastern shore of the river.

"Take a look at this, Mr. Storm." One of the SEALs handed Rick a pair of binoculars. "You can just see him moving a log on the river bank."

Rick looked through the binoculars and saw a huge bear pushing a log towards the river. Following behind were three small cubs. Although small in comparison to what Rick decided was probably the mother, the cubs looked to be about as big as he was. And probably a lot nastier.

The bear moved the log part way into the water and then placed her cubs on top. Then she shoved off, leaping onto the log at the last second. Then she paddled to an island some twenty or thirty yards from the bank. "Hey! I think she's used her claws to partially hollow out the log. It's a crude boat."

Once ashore, the momma and the cubs began gorging on some sort of melons on the island.

"I bet if we come back in a couple of million years, those bears will have nuclear powered subs." Rick said, only half joking.

"I'll put that on my calendar." The SEAL replied.

As they watched, something large and grey rose out of the water and shambled towards one of the cubs. The little bear ran to his mother. She stood on her hind legs and as the grey thing approached, decapitated it with on swipe of its paw. The grey beast collapsed and the bears went back to eating.

The SEAL shook his head. "You and the ladies came up this river in a freakin' PBR, sir?"

Rick shook his head. "Tatiana wasn't with us, but I did have two friends with me, so we were okay."

"Jesus." The SEAL said and walked away.

"I think the legend of Derrick Storm is growing." Kate said. "By the time that story gets around, you'll have paddled up the river in a canoe and talked the bears into becoming your army. And your wife will have been around just to be eye candy."

Rick kissed her." You've been more than eye candy since the day I met you, but you are the most beautiful eye candy I've ever met."

Kate laughed. "That sort of flattery will get you everywhere with me."

As they headed back to the helo hangar, they ran into Montgomery.

"Good news, good news and bad news." He said.

"Let's with the good news." Rick said.

"The _Hayes'_ drone found a channel in the river that can take both ships. And the weather satellite shows that there's a line of summer storms moving across the upper Midwest. The rain will eventually raise the level of the river." Montgomery leaned forward so they wouldn't be overheard. "The bad news is that we can't track the transfer device that the real Derrick Storm took anymore. It seems he left. But we did pick up a burst of energy when he transferred. It was enough for us to pinpoint his location. He was about another seventy miles up the river. Captain Brodsky is going to stop about ten miles from the spot and send in some drones to take a look."

That night Rick and the three women gather in the Combat Information Center as the drones approached the site where Storm had been.

Lieutenant Chen was busy putting up one screen after another showing feed from the drones. "Sir, we can't get anything from above the trees except that there's a heat source down there. I'm going to have the helicopter drone drop under the trees and see what's to be seen."

She changed screens again and now they could see the greenish picture from the night vision camera. "There we go. Some kind of structure and there are a bunch of critters around it. There's a fence around the compound…."Chen had the drone move. "And there's some kind of net over the two buildings. Whoa! And we have two dead bodies there. Humans."

"I'll bet that the fence and everything is electrified." Castle said. "The fence probably killed predators who came by and that attracted carrion eaters."

"Any idea what killed the men?" Brodsky asked.

"Not a clue."

"Sir, I've gotten a look inside the larger structure. There's a heat source there, too. It looks like a human and he's alive."

Brodsky nodded. "Okay, we'll go in and get him. Chen, keep an eye on the compound and Lt. Daly can figure out how his SEALs can get the man out."

The plan was simple if not elegant. All of the helicopters aboard the two ships would carry the SEALs as close to the compound as they could get. They'd drop the SEALs and then hover, providing covering fire. One helicopter would use missiles to blast a hole in the electrified fence and then take out the power source with heavy machine guns, using missiles as a last resort for fear of friendly fire injuries to whoever was inside the compound. Kate was very happy that Daly did not want Rick along.

They stood on the bridge, watching the helicopters leave. "It looks like a miniature version of _Apocalypse Now_. I wonder if they ever thought of playing _Ride of the Valkyries_?"

"I doubt if the animals would appreciate it." Kate said.

"What is this _Apocalypse Now?_ " Tatiana asked.

"We'll show it to you when we get home." Simone said. "We'll have a movie night with popcorn and everything."

They could hear and see the assault and in minutes the helicopters were on their way back.

Daly called the ship on the radio. "Two minor injuries, but we got him."

"Who is it?" Brodsky asked.

"He's beat up and a real mess, but I'm positive it's another Mr. Storm."


	13. Chapter 13

I, Spy.

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I spy with my little eye, that I don't own Castle. Rating: M, occasionally. Time: After season eight, but before children.

 **Chapter Thirteen. I shall return.**

 **Author's note: This chapter is based on Chapters four and five of Alexis's in Wonderland. Although I've tried to tell the backstory, you may want to read those chapters. Don't worry, I'll wait for you.**

Detective Kate Beckett hadn't gotten to her desk when Captain Montgomery stuck his head out of his office. "Beckett. My office. Now. Oh, you can bring your coffee."

Once in his office, she saw the file on his desk. "Sir, why is Castle's file here? I thought we'd established that he got drunk and fell on a knife. The bastard was watching a video of him raping his daughter, Alexis."

"We have some shocking new evidence and I absolutely guarantee that Richard Castle did not die of a fall onto a knife while drunk."

The first thing that Beckett though of was that somehow Alexis' alibi had somehow been broken. Since the death of her father, Kate had developed a friend/ big sister relationship with her. Alexis had been basically their only suspect, but she had been very visibly in Boston at the time of the death of her father.

Kate shook her head. "Sir, Richard Castle died in an accident. I'd bet my badge on it."

"Then you'd lose. The New Mexico police picked up a man staggering along a highway in the middle of nowhere three days ago. He couldn't tell them much, so they checked his fingerprints and his DNA. Richard Castle is alive and in New Mexico."

Kate was shocked. "But…who was that who died?"

"We don't know. But I'm betting if a fake Castle died, it wasn't an accident. I've checked the file, there were no fingerprints or DNA taken?"

Kate slowly shook her head. "No, sir. There didn't seem to be any point. It was Castle. It was his loft. We all knew him."

"Well, there is now. The first thing we have to do is find out who did die in Castle's loft. Get to work, Detective."

Kate walked out of his office and put the file down on Ryan's desk. Esposito came over and sat on the side of the desk. "What did the captain want?" He asked.

"The Richard Castle death is now an open case."

"Why? The bastard is dead and it was an accident. Open and shut."

"Except that Richard Castle is alive in New Mexico. We now have the murder of a John Doe, AKA Richard Castle to work. Get busy reading the file. There has to be something in there that'll tell us who this guy really was. And I agree with the captain. You don't go to that much trouble to become someone else and then die in a dumb accident. Look for signs that it was murder."

"What are you going to do?"

"I have to talk with Lanie. And then his family."

Lanie Parish smiled when she saw her friend. "Hi, Sweetie. Want some coffee?"

Kate shook her head. "I'm here on business. Did you take fingerprints or DNA from the Richard Castle murder?"

Lanie grimaced in distaste. "I could hardly stand to touch the bastard, even when he was dead."

"Are there any signs that it wasn't an accident?"

"Kate! You certainly don't think Alexis did something, do you? And if you did, I'm here to tell you she didn't kill her father, the bastard."

"You're right, because Richard Castle has been found alive in New Mexico. We now have the death of a John Doe to investigate."

Lanie shook her head, as if she hadn't heard right. "Wait! Castle is alive? How is that possible?"

"You don't have any fingerprints, anything with his prints on them or any DNA?"

"Everything is off to storage. And you know how they treat solved case files. Even if we find anything at all, it'll be too degraded to use."

"Get everything back and check it." Kate said. She took a deep breath. "God, what a mess I made of the investigation."

"It's not your fault, honey."

"Yes it is. If I'd found out that the vic wasn't Castle, the real Castle might have been found a lot earlier."

"Kate…."

"Lanie, I have to go see Martha and Alexis." She walked out of the morgue.

Alexis had been expecting Kate for a while. Not because they had become best friends, but because of a meeting she'd had two weeks earlier. She'd opened the door to find a man she knew was Richard Castle, but not her father, and two Detective Kate Becketts.

"Can we come in?" He asked.

"And you're…." Alexis asked.

"I'm the Rick Castle that was with the guy who….helped you with your dad. This is my wife, Kate, and Tatiana Beckov, a Russian version of Kate."

Tatiana held out her hand. "I prefer to think of Kate as an American me."

Alexis smiled and invited them in. "What do you want?"

They had all sat down in the living room before Rick answered. "Is Martha here?"

"She's in LA. She got a job on a sitcom. She'll be gone for two months, longer if her agent finds her any work in LA."

"We have a problem and you might be able to help us."

"But feel free to turn us down. You really owe us nothing." Kate said, quickly.

Alexis slowly shook her head. "I owe you guys everything."

"Hear us out and then decide." Rick took a deep breath, organizing his thoughts. "We found another Rick Castle, from another Earth. This one was a writer, too. And he had a daughter named Alexis who he loved more than anything. But she disappeared when she was fourteen. He dropped everything and with the help of a couple of FBI agents, did all he could to find her. Two years later a guy named McElroy tried to grab a thirteen year old girl in Ohio. The cops saw it, chased him and when he started shooting, they killed him. When they searched his home, they found clothing and other things belonging to seventeen girls, including Alexis. He also had a diary showing where he'd buried all the girls. When Alexis' remains were recovered, this Rick Castle fell apart. He stopped writing, stopped doing anything except sitting around his house and crying."

"That's awful." Alexis said. "How can I help?"

"This is a little tricky because we're not sure what really happened. This Castle was kidnapped by another man called Derrick Storm."

"Like in the books? Really?" Alexis asked.

"Yes, but this Storm was nothing like the guy in the books. He was a cold blooded killer. An evil man. Now why he took the other Castle, we don't know. Perhaps to use him as bait for a trap, but a trap for who and why, we don't know. But we can't take the kidnapped Rick back to his home Earth."

"Why not?"

"On your Earth, Senator Bracken was killed in a car bomb explosion. In the kidnapped Rick's Earth, he became President. Bracken is a complete sociopath, but so far he's played it smart, portraying himself as looking out for the little guy and taking on the corrupt elites. He hasn't set up a full police state yet, but he will. People are already starting to "disappear.""

"Will he be in trouble with this Bracken?" Alexis asked, curious as to where this is going.

"We don't want people like Bracken to discover that there are infinite alternate universes out there. There are enough evil people loose already. Now the kidnapped Castle knows that alternate universes exist. And, a scientist on his Earth has proven mathematically that they do exist. So far, that's just a bit of scientific trivia. They have no idea how to get from one universe to another. But, as luck would have it, Castle knows the scientist. They're poker buddies."

"And if the kidnapped Castle gets home, he'll tell his poker buddy. And who knows what hell that could unleash."

"What do you want me to do?"

"We could drop this Castle off on any number of Earths where no one would believe a word he said about alternate Earths. We could even selectively erase some of his memories and send him home, but keeping them erased could be harder than we think. But we had an idea. We could send the man who loves his daughter Alexis more than anything to an earth where there's an Alexis with no dad."

"We can set it up to look like he was on this Earth all the time, and we can erase some memories if he asks us to." Kate finished.

"But you don't have to do this. We know what your dad did to you."

Alexis looked at them and thought. "You know, the way he changed, it was almost like another Dad was here and not the one I'd grown up with."

The three looked at each other. Kate spoke first. "Do you think there was a switch? That someone really did take this Castle's place?"

The other two shrugged.

"Look", Tatiana said, "you don't have to decide right now. And if things don't work out, we can snatch this Castle and still set him up on another Earth."

Alexis had decided. Her dad, until he somehow changed, had been the greatest thing in her life. To have a real dad back would be worth the risk.

She smiled at the memory of meeting Rick Castle and two Kates again. Then went to open the door.

"Hi, Kate. How are you?"

"Hi, Alexis. I need to talk to you, officially."

Alexis had thought about how she'd react to Kate when she came. She smiled and led Kate to the couch. "What is it?"

"I guess I should just come out and tell you. Your father has been found alive in New Mexico."

Alexis smiled and then looked puzzled. "This had better not be a joke."

Kate shook her head. "It's no joke. They did his fingerprints and DNA. It's your father."

"Then who died here?"

Kate pulled out the Richard Castle, now John Doe, file. "We don't know. But we think that anyone who went to such extremes to become your father probably didn't die in a drunken accident. Lanie did say the killing blow was almost perfectly placed, by someone who knew what he was doing. But given all the other evidence, we concluded it was just bad luck."

Alexis looked puzzled and upset. "So someone kidnaps my dad, replaces him with some pervert who rapes me and treats you like…'Alexis stopped and blushed.

"I don't mind you saying it now, Alexis. He treated me like his personal sex toy. But, we were so sure he was your dad, we didn't take his fingerprints or DNA. I feel awful about this because if I'd done my job properly, we'd have known this guy wasn't the real Rick Castle. We could have done something. But, we'd like to exhume your dad's body, or rather this guy's body, and get his fingerprints and DNA."

Alexis shook her head. "That's not possible, Kate. After dad died there people out there who think that raping your own daughter is the greatest sexual thrill of all. I got e-mails and videos and….even snail mail. They thought he was a hero and not a monster. I was afraid they'd treat his grave as some sort of sick shrine, so I had him cremated. I flushed the ashes down the toilet." Although Alexis had never gotten any such communications, she had gleefully poured her dad's ashes down the toilet and then peed on them before flushing.

"So you have anything that might help us?"

Alexis pretended to think, then shook her head. "Everything here has been cleaned or washed a gazillion times since then. The place in the Hamptons, too. I was so afraid that someone would manage to recover those horrible videos of him and me that I had the whole hard drive destroyed. It was ground up and then the bits were sent to be recycled. I'm sorry."

"That's all right. You couldn't have known."

"Kate, do we know what happened to my dad? Was he kidnapped? Just run away? Hit his head and get amnesia? What?"

"The New Mexico police will tell us more. And probably the FBI. They have jurisdiction on kidnappings across state lines. I'm sure they'll get involved."

Kate was correct as she found when she got back to the precinct. Montgomery called her into his office. "Pack your bags, Beckett. You're headed for New Mexico. The Feds have assumed jurisdiction and they want you there. They're even paying for your expenses. You'll be flying out tomorrow."

Kate thought back to one FBI agent who might want her on a case. "Is the agent who wants me….?"

"Named Sorenson?" Montgomery smiled at her. "No. Sorenson is in Europe."

Kate spent the rest of the day with Ryan, Esposito and Lanie. However, they were no closer to finding out who the mysterious Castle impersonator was than they had been that morning.

The next day, Kate flew to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Waiting for her were two women, both were tall and slender, with long black hair and cinnamon colored complexions. One was dressed in a dark suit with her hair in a ponytail and was wearing dark glasses. The other wore a khaki uniform, wore her hair long and loose and had a handgun on her left hip, butt forward.

"Detective Beckett? Glad you could come. I'm Special Agent Teresa Olviedo, FBI. This is my little sister, Elisa Olviedo."

Elisa held out her hand. "Sergeant Olviedo, Apache Reservation Police. If you need anything and don't want to submit a hundred forms to get it, come to me."

"And if you actually want to get what you want, come to me." Teresa said.

Beckett noticed that both women smiled as they spoke. "You're twins?"

"I'm the eldest." Teresa said quickly.

"She's also the one who always wore a dress in school and kept her nose in a book. She got accepted by the FBI so she didn't have to do anything but look like a Fed and glare at people from behind her shades."

"My little sister was always in trouble and was a real tomboy. When she got tired of beating up the little boys in class who'd tease her, she started carrying a gun. Oh, by the way, your witness is here. We've put her in the same hotel you're in."

"My witness?" Kate said. "What witness?"

"Alexis Castle." Teresa said, raising an eyebrow. "She isn't your witness?"

"She's a witness all right, but I didn't ask her to come here."

"We should go talk to her."

Instead of the usual FBI black SUV with tinted windows, the Olviedo sisters led her to a Jeep with the Apache Police logo on the side.

"We'll be going into the mountains tomorrow." Elisa explained. "This'll get us a lot further than my sister's ride. And she won't make a federal case out of it if the car gets scratched."

"And with my sister driving, we'll be lucky if the Jeep only gets scratched."

Kate was ready to agree with Teresa by the time the Jeep got to her hotel. Elisa hadn't so much as scratched the Jeep, but the number of near misses concerned Kate. She was more concerned when she walked into the lobby. "Alexis, what are you doing here?"

The redhead stood up from the chair she had been in and looked Kate in the eye. "My father is here. Where else should I be?"

"Alexis, we don't know what happened to your dad. Whatever happened…."

"Perhaps we should tell you a bit about what we found out." Teresa said. "First we'll get you checked in and then we'll talk and have dinner." She walked to the counter. "Miguel, where are you?"

An elderly man came out, walking quickly. "Teresita, mi muy linda amiga, como esta?"

"Detective Beckett is here from New York. We need her things put in her room and we want dinner."

Miguel looked at Kate, who looked back. He was tall and skinny with a weather beaten face. He hadn't spent his life behind a desk, Kate guessed. His long silver hair was worn in a ponytail and he was dressed in cowboy fashion: Cowboy boots, jeans with a heavy belt and buckle and a plaid shirt. Around his neck was a turquoise necklace.

He shook his head. "And now I have the four most beautiful women in the world staying in my hotel? My life is complete. Welcome, Senorita Beckett. Welcome."

Elisa smiled at him. "If you stood out in the desert and spoke, Miguel, the bullshit would fertilize the desert all the way to Mexico. And your life is not complete until you have Jorge take the lady's things to her room and wake the cook up. We're hungry."

Except for Alexis, they had margaritas before dinner and then ate. When they were done, Teresa told them what they knew so far. "State Police found Mr. Castle stumbling along a road in the mountains to the north. He was dehydrated, exhausted and had bruises and infected cuts all over his body. It also looks like he was chained by his hands and feet, as well. They rushed him to the nearest hospital and then transferred him here. He's in pretty bad shape even now. What little he's said doesn't make much sense, but he does seem to be begging someone to let him go and stop hurting him. We're assuming his injuries are due to torture."

Elisa took over the story. "We figured he couldn't have made it very far in the shape he was in. We borrowed a couple of trackers from the Border Patrol and found what's left of a little settlement well off the grid back in the mountains. And it was on our reservation."

"Did the Apache Police know about the settlement? Wouldn't it be illegal to squat on Apache land?" Kate asked.

Elisa looked embarrassed. "Back in the old days, we'd have been on them like stink on shit in no time. But, these days, most Apaches work at the casino over by the Interstate. Or at our new school, or the new hospital, or the shopping center, or the community center. Old Geronimo and Magnus Colorado had the wrong idea about how to fight you people. If he'd put up some table games and slots, we'd own New Mexico by now." Elisa looked up at Kate and smiled. "Hey, we're Americans now, but you just wonder sometimes."

Teresa took over again. "We have a team up here, both FBI and Apache Police. The place was pretty well trashed when whoever it was left, but they found a dead body buried under some rocks and a set of Richard Castle's books, annotated by someone. We'll go out and see what there is to see tomorrow."

"Can I go?" Alexis asked.

"Miss Castle, I don't think…." Teresa began.

"I know my father better than any of you. I might see something important that you'd miss."

"I've known Alexis for years." Kate put in." She's very smart and she has worked as an intern at the 12th Precinct."

The Olviedo sisters exchanged looks. "Okay, but follow orders, understand?" Teresa told her.

"She will follow orders, unlike her father." Kate said bitterly.

When Kate and Alexis went back to their rooms after dinner, Alexis stopped at Kate's door. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

"Sure. Come on in."

Once seated, Alexis looked around as if she wasn't quite sure of what to say. She finally spoke. "My dad was the greatest dad in the world, and then he changed. I mean he changed slowly, but…He never would have forced me to have sex with him. Do you think my dad was kidnapped and some….one was put in his place? That my real dad never did anything to me?"

Kate shook her head slowly. "I don't know. I know that after I got past the arrogant playboy, I really liked your dad. I was falling in love with him, and then….he was different after we went to bed. He became very different. I hope that the real Richard Castle isn't a bad guy, but we'll have to see how the investigation turns out."

The next day the Olviedos, Kate and Alexis headed into the mountains in the Apache policewoman's Jeep. They left the highway for a two lane blacktop, then got off onto a dirt road and finally were on a dirt track. They found themselves in a small canyon with some trees and a small stream. Half a dozen vehicles were there and at least a dozen people poking industriously around the remains of a small, semi-permanent camp. An FBI agent, identifiable as such by his blue suit, came to greet Special Agent Olviedo. "We've made some progress. I'd have called you, but we have no reception around here, neither phones nor our radios."

Teresa introduced Kate and Alexis to the man, Special Agent Ward Simmons. It was morning, but Simmons was already starting to sweat in his suit. Kate thought that he probably spent more time behind a desk than in the field.

"What do you have?" Teresa asked.

"We have an ID on the corpse. Joseph Campbell, cult leader. Apparently he has become more irrational over the years and most of his followers fell away. Just the hard core came here with him a couple of years ago."

"Any idea why he might want to kidnap Rick Castle?" Kate asked.

Simmons nodded. "Let me show you something." He led them to a large SUV with the rear cargo door opened. "These are all of Mr. Castle's books, heavily annotated by Campbell. It's a little hard to be absolutely sure, but it looks like Campbell was convinced that Castle was secretly sending him messages through his books. Campbell apparently came to believe that Castle had some great, cosmic secret that he was trying to share. Since Campbell couldn't decipher the so called secrets, he kidnapped Castle to try to get him to talk."

"What about the copy of Castle that took over his life?"

"I might be able to help." The speaker was a young blonde woman with an FBI shield, but dressed in boots, khaki slacks and a tee shirt. "I'm Special Agent Linda Graham. The why, I imagine was to keep anyone from knowing that the real Richard Castle had been kidnapped."

Kate nodded. That seemed obvious.

"And I think we may have the how." She held out a copy of _Death of a Prom Queen_. "There are several mentions of a Dr. Kelly Neiman in here in Campbell's handwriting. She was a plastic surgeon whose boyfriend tried to murder a woman in Ohio. At his trial she brought guns to the courthouse and tried to break him out. They were both killed along with several other people. When the Ohio cops checked her home and office, it seemed that Dr. Neiman was redoing criminal's faces and doing some rather sadistic work on women her boyfriend kidnapped."

"Anything that might suggest that the death of the John Doe pretending to be Castle in New York was murder?" Kate asked.

Both Simmons and Graham shook their heads. "We have nothing so far, Detective. But we'll keep you in the loop."

"We may not be getting much here." Simmons said. "The people here apparently lived in tents, except for one trailer Campbell used. The tents and the wooden poles that held them up were burned as was the trailer. It doesn't look like we'll find any useful fingerprints or DNA to figure out who else was here and might have helped to kidnap Castle or murder your John Doe. The coroner thinks Campbell has been dead for about a week before we found him. Given we're out in the open, fingerprints and DNA will degrade pretty quick."

"We do have one witness, though." Kate said. "The real Richard Castle."

Teresa Olviedo nodded. "We'll go by the hospital tomorrow and see how he's doing and if he can talk."

It was another two days before the doctors would allow them to interview Castle. A Doctor Nordstrom cautioned them about Castle. "Mr. Castle was held prisoner and abused, tortured, I should say, for a long period. Probably years. And it appears that various drugs were used to interrogate him about something. And, it appears that Mr. Castle is suffering from amnesia, probably from the trauma and the drugs. Please, do _not_ upset him."

When Kate, Alexis and the Olviedo sisters entered his room, Castle's eyes lit up when he saw Alexis. "Pumpkin, is that you? You're…How old are you? I remember your fourteenth birthday. I had them make a cake like…." Castle stopped. "The cake was like…." He began to look stressed.

"It was the Millennium Falcon, Dad." Alexis began to cry and threw herself onto his bed and hugged him.

"Mr. Castle, I'm Special Agent Teresa Olviedo, FBI, this is my sister, Elisa, of the Apache Police and this is Detective Beckett, NYPD."

Ricks eyes swept over the three women, but here was no recognition when he saw Beckett.

Over the next week, they interviewed Castle, but his memory was not improving and he could tell them almost nothing about his time after he was kidnapped. A lot of his memory was missing. He did not remember Beckett or the Nikki Heat books at all. He did remember being married to Meredith, but not to Gina. He could remember in great detail the plots of movies he'd taken Alexis to when she was a child, but had no idea what the last three Derrick Storm books were about, or even that they existed. Finally, Alexis took him back to New York. Kate kept in touch with Alexis and both women were convinced that Richard Castle had never had sex with his daughter. That was the work of his double.

One night after coming home from a hard day at the precinct, Kate got a knock on her door.

"Mr. Castle? How are you? Will you come in?"

Castle looked upset and uncomfortable, but accepted a glass of wine and sat down.

"How have you been?" Kate asked, trying to keep the mood light.

"Fine. As fine as you could expect." He stopped and took a deep breath. "Alexis told me how awful I was to you. And I read the last Nikki Heat books. They're disgusting. They make you look like…."

"A cheap whore." Kate finished for him. "That's the way he wanted me to look, to get back at me for dumping him, I guess."

Castle blushed deeply. "First I want to apologize to you for what I did."

Kate held up her hand. "We don't know that you did anything, Mr. Castle. You were kidnapped, held for years. We don't know how long you were gone, but it's quite possible that your "replacement" was responsible for the evil blamed on you."

Castle nodded. "Thank you, but we'll never really know, will we? Anyway, I talked to Black Pawn. They have no intention of ever reprinting those books or any of the Nikki Heat books. And, I've decided I'll never write another one. I'll stay out of your life entirely."

"Are you sure?" Kate asked. "The first books were great and you were a huge help with me on the cases."

"I was?" Castle sounded shocked. "I thought you didn't like me."

"At first I didn't, but you grew on me. Tell you what? Suppose you come to the precinct with me tomorrow and just shadow me and see what happens. Maybe you'll end up writing more Nikki Heat." She smiled at him. "Maybe we'll find out you're a nice guy after all."

And so began what is referred to as a beautiful friendship.


	14. Chapter 14

I, Spy.

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: Yes! I do own Castle. Okay, I don't. But I've always wanted to say that. Rating: M, here and there. Time: The future.

 **Chapter Fourteen. The Sun Never Sets….**

They had all returned to Norfolk after briefing Alexis Castle on the return of her "father". According to Montgomery and Namura, all was going well with Rick, Alexis and Kate on that Earth.

Things we're not going so well on the Earth they were on, however.

"Problem, Simone?" Kate asked, finding her friend sitting in in their apartment overlooking Norfolk harbor.

"No. Just looking at the ships. A carrier just came in with its escorts and two big container ships arrived just after them, heading for Newport News, I think."

Kate sat down with her friend. "You know, we're a lot alike. I would always say that things were fine with me when they really weren't. I was able to at last look happy while I lied."

Simone laughed mirthlessly. "Am I that obvious?"

Kate just nodded.

Simone looked at her friend for almost a minute before speaking. "You know that I love you like a sister, and you know I love Rick, but not like a brother. I really do love him, just like you do." Seeing that Kate was about to say something, she went on quickly. "And I will never, ever act on that. I'd rather die than hurt you like that and I know that Rick will never love me like he loves you." Simone took a deep breath. "But we had another Rick Castle right here. I even talked to Montgomery about maybe letting him and me go to some Earth with no other Ricks or Kates. Maybe if I'd explained how I felt a little better…." She shook her head rapidly. "Forget it. I'm just glad I found my very own family who love me and care for me after my awful life on that other Earth." She hugged Kate quickly, then smiled at her. "Everything's okay, Kate. I'm even starting to consider Tatiana as my other sister."

The two sat looking out at the harbor without saying a thing until Rick and Tatiana came in. "Babe, Simone? Montgomery has another mission for us. One he says will be easy."

"Why do I feel a sense of impending doom when I hear that?" Kate asked.

Rick laughed. "Because you know how our life has gone. Come on, he's got a little conference room and he's ready for us."

They found Ray Montgomery sitting behind a desk with nothing but a laptop on it. "Sit down, people. Let me tell you about this new Earth."

All four groaned in unison.

"Okay, this won't be so bad. First let me give you the background on this Earth. As with all of the alternate Earths, there are a million tiny differences in each of them and sometimes some huge differences. These are the huge differences."

He cleared his throat. "To begin with, the US never became an independent nation. Something called the London Conference of 1774 gave the thirteen colonies enough autonomy to satisfy most Americans. Oh, there were some who wanted independence at any price, but they were a small minority. To this day, the US, or the American Union, as it's called, is a part of the British Empire. It consists of pretty much the US as we'd know it, plus Canada. It's a self governing Dominion, and is the economic heart of the British Empire."

"Secondly, the British never got involved in the First World War. The French wanted to bring the Brits into an alliance with them, but France's main ally was Russia and the Russians wanted nothing to do with England. They didn't trust them and apparently had designs on part of the British Empire, mainly India. Plus, the Germans never built up their fleet to be a threat to the Royal Navy, so the British never felt really threatened by the Germans. The Germans promised to keep their fleet big enough to take on the French and the Russians and no more. When World War One did start, the English were very upset about the German invasion of Belgium since England had signed a treaty guaranteeing Belgium's neutrality. But the French wouldn't allow British troops on their soil, and the moment passed. England remained neutral in the war, but did sell weapons, raw materials and food to both sides. In addition, the Germans, having failed to crush the French fleet early in the war sold their entire colonial empire to the British to keep it out of French hands. The war lasted from 1914 to 1921. The war ended because all of the nations involved pretty much collapsed and the British were able to broker a peace. The British ended up as the wealthiest and most powerful nation of the planet and did not suffer nearly one million deaths and several million wounded that they did in many other Earths. Oh, and post war, the bought Libya from the Italians who had conquered the place just before the war and took over much of the Ottoman Empire's Arab lands as protectorates."

"Sounds like they were doing pretty good? But how about World War Two? That was the war that really put the British Empire out of business."

"Well, they lucked out again. Germany was the first nation to more or less recover from the first war. In 1934 a man named Mueller seized power and began to build up German strength. He was much more efficient and patient than the Nazis, was far less racist and listened to his generals. By the time the Germans started trying to overrun Europe in 1944, the Germans were far more powerful than our WWII Germans. More and better tanks, other armored vehicles, artillery, and aircraft, including jets. While even the British had just a few experimental jets, the Luftwaffe had whole squadrons of jet fighters and bombers. And their Navy remained small so as not to upset the British."

"The Germans quickly over ran Western Europe much as they did in our world, but added Sweden and Spain as allies. They divided up Eastern Europe between themselves and Soviet Union, then turned on the Soviets in 1946. Like other invaders, the Germans got bogged down in Russia's vast expanses."

"You don't ever mess with us Russians." Tatiana said grimly.

"Again the British tried to broker a peace treaty, but all they have gotten is a series of cease fires, but they never hold. There's constant fighting along the cease fire line, everything from platoon outposts trading machine gun fire to battles involving whole army corps or even field armies. One day, the war will start up again full scale. Luckily, without nukes. No one has figured those out yet."

"What about Japan?" Kate asked.

"The Japanese had no desire to take on the British Empire all by themselves, so they concentrated on China. Like the Germans in Russia, they got bogged down. The British have provided arms for the Chinese through Hong Kong and India which keeps the war going nicely, The Japanese don't have the manpower or the industrial power to conquer China, but they're too proud to make some kind of a deal with the Chinese, so the Japanese are being slowly drained white in China."

"So what are we supposed to do?" Rick asked.

"We have contacts, rather secret ones, with the Brits. You'll be going to Singapore, which is still British, and do some schmoozing with the locals."

"Why do the locals need schmoozing?"

"Anti-colonialism isn't entirely dead on that Earth. In the 1930s the Philippines broke away from Spain, French Indochina broke away from France after France fell to the Germans in '44 and the Netherland East Indies, what we know as Indonesia, broke away from the Dutch soon after. But, colonial nationalists in the British Empire had a problem. The more or less wrecked Soviet Union didn't offer the model that communism offered in our Earths and leaving the Empire meant leaving the wealthiest economy on the planet behind. Ireland tried it and they're mostly bankrupt and the Irish leaving in droves for jobs in the Empire. So, most of the nationalists settle for being self-governing Dominions within the Empire. Not a lot of them like it, but…"Montgomery shrugged. "Not much they can do."

"So? What about Singapore?"

"The British are fighting a low level war against Indochina, the Philippines and Indonesia over what would be Malaysia and Singapore on our Earths. The Japanese have managed to provide some weapons and other support although not officially. The Brits want to keep this as a colonial police action and not a war involving other nations. We've supplied some technical support to the Empire and have used our technical intelligence, satellites and such to help out. In return we get raw materials and we make powerful friends if Demming and his gang ever discover this Earth."

Kate wasn't entirely convinced. "So all we have to do is some PR work with the locals?"

"Yes, in fact, to a few military and intelligence types there, you'll be Derrick Storm and his wife and her sisters. Everyone else will know you as Richard Castle, a wealthy North American and his family."

"So, off we go?" Rick said.

The trip was made on yet another submarine, the USS _Galveston._ The _Galveston_ had been modified from a standard attack sub to be a collector intelligence. The US Navy had previously used a missile submarine to put surveillance satellites in orbit. Lieutenant Commander Pedrarias explained what the US had done.

"The satellites we put up are small, less than a hundred pounds each. They have resolution to about two feet at a hundred and fifty miles up. We also have electronic surveillance birds up there, picking up radio traffic. Not as good as our big stuff, but way better than anything the Brits have ever thought of. They're just now starting a space program. They have a ground station in Singapore that collects the intelligence the satellites pick up. We have a computer onboard doing the same thing. Except our computer is about fifty times smaller and fifty times better than the ones we provided them."

"Don't we trust them?"

Pedrarias shrugged. "Partly, we don't trust anyone. As people learn that there's other universes out there, they want to go there. Sure, we're friends with them now, but maybe in twenty, thirty or fifty years, we're deadly enemies. But most importantly, we don't want to leave them totally dependent on us for support. We gave them the plans for the computers and they were able to build them using transistors that we had fifty or sixty years ago. But they can build their own stuff, keep it running and even make it better. If we just gave them our top of the line stuff….Well, they don't have the technology to duplicate or make spare parts for our stuff, and it would take a battalion of PhDs to keep it working. On your own Earth you've seen what happens when third world countries buy "prestige" weapons they don't have the industrial base or the trained people to use it." Pedrarias smiled. "But, these guys are really sharp. Just give them a while."

Pedrarias turned on a computer screen and brought up a live video from a satellite. "We can see the British Far Eastern Fleet now." He tapped the screen and what had been tiny dots resolved into an aircraft carrier and its escorts. " _HMS Ocean_ and her escorts between Luzon and Formosa. She displaces about 75000 thousand tons and carries maybe eighty aircraft." Pedrarias tapped the screen again. "This is _HMS Courageous_ , from the same class as the _Ocean_. She and her escorts are in the South China Sea, about halfway between Indochina and the Philippines. And lastly, "He tapped the screen, "is _HMS Malta_ , a slightly smaller ship, at anchor in Singapore." He tapped the screen again and it showed all of the South China Sea. "Those dots you see are ships, everything from carriers to sailboats. Some of them are carrying weapons to the rebels in the Commonwealth of Malaysia. We just have to figure out which ones."

A sailor stuck his head into the small office. "Mr. Storm, sir, our British visitors are here. You should come topside to greet them the Captain says."

Castle was surprised to find the dignitaries arriving in a beautiful white yacht. "They travel first class, I see."

Montgomery had joined him. "Camouflage. Who's going to suspect a yacht full of partying Brits of meeting someone from another Earth? All of the crew are from British Intelligence."

Everyone was introduced to Castle, as Derrick Storm, of course, and then they were led below for a dog and pony show put on by Castle and Pedrarias. When that was over, Rick, Kate, Simone and Tatiana went to the yacht and were taken to Singapore.

The four were flown by helicopter to the flight deck of _HMS Malta_ where they were given a brief tour. Tatiana, who was the most knowledgeable of things military, thought the technology was equivalent to the early '60s. "They have a mix of jets and prop planes. And it looks like they have day fighters with no radar and larger, two seat night and all weather fighters with radar. They need a pilot and a specialist radar operator. " She whispered.

"Let's not brag." Castle whispered back.

"I just want you to know what's going on."

After the ship's tour, they were taken to the Raffles Hotel, where all the dignitaries were staying and relaxed for a bit until they were presented with a tuxedo for Rick and long dresses for the ladies. "Cocktail's tonight at the Governor-General's mansion." Montgomery told them." You'll be Mr. Castle and his wife and her sisters, since most of the people there aren't cleared to know about Derrick Storm. Oh, everyone on the sub was very impressed with your presentation. They were even more impressed with some of the goodies we brought them."

"Goodies?" Tatiana asked, always curious.

"We've dug out plans for some old antiaircraft missiles and some aircraft. It'll be cutting edge technology here, however."

The party started out as boring. Rick was supposed to be a wealthy North American mining magnate, looking to invest in Malaysia or elsewhere in Asia. While he had been well briefed and was able to ask intelligent questions to the many people who came to him with investment opportunities, he decided to concentrate on his wife and went off to dance with Kate.

"You're beautiful." He said.

She laughed. "I'm also scandalous around here."

"I love you when you're scandalous. But why just around here?"

"The local ladies all wear a girdle and bra undergarment that's about as bad as an old fashioned corset. But, I'm wearing a pair of bikini panties and no bra. I think the maid who brought the dress to me must have gossiped when she found that corset thing still in our room."

"I'm not going to be cut dead at the club, or something equally English, am I?" He said with a laugh.

"The older ladies, who need a corset and a mule to tighten it are scandalized. The younger ladies are all abuzz. I think I may have started a new fashion trend."

Both Rick and Kate as well as Tatiana stopped and looked out through the windows of the mansion.

"That was gunfire." Kate said.

"I think so." Rick said, looking worried.

"And we have no weapons."

Kate winked at him. "Speak for yourself. I have my back up Glock and Tatiana has her own pistol. But it's probably nothing." She quickly added.

A loud explosion proved her wrong almost at once.

"What the hell?" Castle said as the music stopped and the guests began to talk agitatedly among themselves. A young officer in dress blues ran in and went to the senior army officer present, the commander of the 17th Division, which was headquartered in Singapore, Major General Pete Rees.

The general looked serious as he addressed the crowd. "Ladies and gentlemen, there is apparently a commando attack on the government center here. We have a platoon of Gurkhas to defend us, but they may not be enough. I suggest we arm ourselves as best we can and hope for the best. We have mostly hunting arms just down the hall. All military personnel and anyone with firearms experience should come with me. "

Rick, and the three women went down the hall with a number of men. The soldiers got the military rifles and the submachine guns, while the civilian got hunting weapons or pistols. Kate and Tatiana, who were already armed got several boxes of 9mm shells, while Simone got a double barreled shotgun. Rick got a 9mm Browning Hi Power pistol and extra ammo.

As the general was sending his men off to various parts of the large mansion, he was joined by a young Asian man dressed in tiger stripe fatigues and carrying a submachine gun. "Ah, Mr.….Castle. This is my driver, Corporal Limbu, 10th Princess Mary's Own Gurkha Rifles. I need someone to watch a staircase at the far end of the hallway. Could you go with him?"

"We'll be glad to." Kate said, as Simone and Tatiana nodded.

The general looked aghast. "In all honesty, I cannot ask ladies to put themselves in harm's way. I cannot…"

Kate interrupted him. "You're not asking us and we're not asking you, we're going. Corporal, lead the way."

Corporal Limbu looked at the general, who nodded. The five of them headed down a very long hallway.

They had almost reached the staircase when they heard firing ahead of them. A man in civilian clothes staggered out of an office and stumbled down the hallway towards them. A dark form leaned out of the office and shot the man in the back. Corporal Limbu fired, knocking the man back.

"We need to hold them here, Corporal. If we try to go in there, they'll kill us one by one as we try to get through the door. And we can do the same if they come out to get us."

Limbu nodded and replaced the magazine of his submachine gun.

Things changed in seconds, however. There was a shot and a male screamed. "Don't kill me. Don't kill me, you bitch." That was followed by a second shot and a high pitched woman's wail."

"They have hostages." Limbus said. "I'm a Gurkha. Stay here." As he moved forward the other four went with him. Limbu looked at them and laughed. "So, you're as crazy as I am?"

Only Castle nodded.

Limbu held up a grenade. "Blast grenade. Plastic explosive in a cardboard tube. The blast will probably not hurt the hostages, but will disorient the enemy. Ready?"

The nodded and Limbu ran almost to the office door and threw himself to the floor, screaming, "Ayo Gurkhali," firing his weapon with one hand and throwing the grenade with the other. Bullets from inside the office sailed over his head.

When the grenade went off, and they rushed the door, everything seemed to go in slow motion to Castle. He saw a man and a woman on the floor, bleeding and two figures dressed in black from head to toe. One raised his own submachine gun, only to be hit by a shotgun blast in the head from Simone. The second commando charged, hoping to be able to kill them at close range with her pistol when the others couldn't shoot for fear of hitting one of their own.

 _Her?_ Castle thought, recognizing that their opponent was indeed a woman. Then she was on them, punching at Castle and aiming at Tatiana. Kate blocked her shooting hand as Rick pushed his pistol against her chest. As he did so, Kate swung at her head, knocking her ski mask partly off. Castle found himself looking into the hazel eyes of another Kate Beckett.

"Kate?" He gasped.

"Castle?" She replied.

He moved his pistol to one side as he squeezed the trigger, sending a round bouncing off her ribs.

A flash bang grenade momentarily disoriented them and when they could see again, they saw to black clad commandos dragging the other Kate Beckett away.

Kate and Tatiana both fired, but apparently missed.

Outside they could hear heavy firing and voices speaking English. Suddenly the room was full of soldiers. Some went after the escaping commandos and others took care of the wounded, which included Corporal Limbu who was cursing and trying to get a bandage around his wounded leg.

By sunrise, Castle was both exhausted and too keyed up to relax. He and Kate were drinking coffee as Simone and Tatiana sat down with them. "The male hostage bled out. He's dead. The woman will be okay, although she won't be wearing a bikini. If they wear them around here. The dead commando had a .45 caliber submachine gun. The hostages were shot with a 9mm round. That means the woman shot them to lure us into attacking. She is one cold blooded bitch."

All three women looked at Rick, expecting some sort of reply.

When he said nothing, Kate spoke. "You had your pistol against her chest. The bullet would have gone into her heart. She'd be dead. But you moved the gun at the last second, didn't you?"

He nodded. "I can't kill a Kate Beckett. I just can't."

"What if not killing her gets one of us killed?" Tatiana asked angrily.

"I don't know."

"One thing." Simone said. "She recognized you and called you Castle, not Derrick Storm. Why would she know Castle, which is just a cover ID here for some run of the mill rich American?"

"I just don't know." Castle repeated, feeling worse with every question.

"I think she knew Rick Castle. Another Rick Castle. She stopped for just a second when she got close enough to see your face. She didn't want to shoot you either." Tatiana finally said.

None of them had an answer to that.


	15. Chapter 15

I, Spy

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I don't own Castle. Look it up. Rating: M, in spots. Time: The future.

 **Chapter Fifteen. Endless Waves of Grain.**

"We have something." Montgomery said as Rick and the three women walked into his office on the _Galveston_.

Castle groaned. "I'm sorry, but this is all the enthusiasm I can muster. And it's fading fast."

Montgomery ignored his remark. "What do you know about the Sahara Desert?"

Castle shrugged. "If you like deserts, you'll love the Sahara?" He said sarcastically.

"Cave paintings and other evidence show that the Sahara was grasslands with rivers and lakes some ten to twelve thousand years ago."

"And?" Tatiana asked.

"There's an Earth that's much like that. And we have an idea that our Derrick Storm is there. The _Galveston_ is going there."

"Am I going to be asked to sit by a river in the Sahara Plains and tell the fish about what a great guy Derrick Storm is?" Castle said with a smirk.

"It's an interesting Earth." Montgomery continued.

"There's this one Earth I'm really interested in. The one we belong on."

"On this Earth, Islam never got off the ground. The Prophet Mohammed was killed in one of the early skirmishes around Mecca. The religion, such as it is, is only of interest to religious historians. They call it a defunct variation on Christianity."

Castle just stared at him.

"So, the Middle East and North Africa was never conquered by the Arabs, it remained part of the Roman Empire until the Western Roman Empire fell in 505 AD, a bit after the one we know, which fell in 476 AD. The Eastern Roman Empire has continued to this day. Although it's mostly just a bit more than our Turkey."

"Is there a point to this?" Kate asked.

"North Africa has been a part of the Mediterranean world ever since. They look to Europe and not to the Middle East, plus the whole area is Christian much as it was some fifteen hundred years ago in our times. And the Dark Ages have lasted until now. They've barely advanced technologically from where Rome was fifteen hundred years ago."

"My heart soars like and eagle." Castle said with extra sarcasm.

"You like libraries, don't you, Mr. Castle?"

That finally got Rick's attention. "I love them."

"Have you ever heard of the Great Library of Alexandria?"

"Yes. It was a treasure house of knowledge of the Greek and Roman world. According to which legend you listen to, it was destroyed by the Romans or by Muslims. But it's gone now."

Montgomery noticed the enthusiasm Castle was now showing. "Where we're going, most of what the library had was saved, although the library at Alexandria, Egypt is a shadow of its former self. The great library now is the library of Saint Jerome along Lake Tsana about two hundred miles south of Carthage in the Sahara. It's an entire set of libraries running for miles along the lakeshore. There are a group of historians from our world copying books lost for centuries in our worlds." Montgomery smiled. "In fact, one of our people has made quit a splash by introducing something he calls a printing press, using moveable wooden type."

"Really? "Rick said, with a dreamy look in his eyes. "A library that runs for miles along a lake? Um, St. Jerome was, or is, the patron saint of librarians."

"Would you like to go to the library, babe?" Kate asked softly.

"Um, you don't have to go with me."

Kate smiled at him. "Be serious. You think I'd let you go anywhere without me?"

"Or me." Simone added.

"It's unanimous." Tatiana added.

Bohemond of Tunis raised himself in his stirrups as he got to the top of the rise. There ahead of him was the caravansary where he could water his animals and rest his crew and his guests. This close to the river, here were wheat fields from horizon to horizon, feeding half of the Mediterranean world.

Turning in his saddle he saw Sir Richard Castle and his ladies riding at the front of his caravan. It was to be expected that a warrior from far off Britannia would go about with his chain mail hauberk and helm on. And that he would go armed at all times. It was unusual that his women would also wear mail instead of the silks that a man of Sir Richard's wealth could obviously afford, and also go armed. While Sir Richard was a good swordsman, his ladies were not. But their abilities with the crossbow couldn't be denied. Bohemond saw Sir Richard and Lady Kate ride towards him, with the two other women quickly following. "Is the caravansary just ahead?" Sir Richard asked in barbarous Latin. His knowledge of Latin was due to one of Montgoemry's Earth's advances. He, Kate, Simone and Tatiana had been put in a state similar to hypnotism and force fed Latin, so to speak. Now they had a fair knowledge of the language.

Bohemond nodded. "It is, lord. You and your ladies can sleep indoors tonight and have a bath." He hoped that these barbaric northerners actually bathed.

"Excellent." Lady Kate said.

The two other ladies rode up and stopped on either side of Sir Richard and Lady Kate. Unlike most ladies Bohemond had taken to the great Library of St. Jerome, they all rode astride and not sidesaddle. One was exactly like Lady Kate, Lady Tatiana she was called. She had told of having gone on a long mission to far Tartary for her king. The other woman, Lady Simone had spent many years in the English King's domains in Normandie. And, much to Bohemond's surprise, there were no other ladies in the party. He had never seen a noblewoman who was not trailed by a half a dozen maids to help them with every little thing. But the women with Sir Richard took care of themselves and their horses with no help.

 _Truly the English are odd._ Bohemond thought.

Castle turned in his saddle and looked back at the caravan. There were seventy or so horse drawn wagons all in a line mixed in with several dozen pack horses. The caravan was flanked by two dozen horse archers to protect the caravan from Tuareg raiders. The traders headed for the library of St. Jerome were armed and many had their own guards as well. However, a good portion of the travelers were scholars, mostly monks, and none of them were armed. Only one other armed group was with the caravan, a man named Martin Francopoulos, a Norman mercenary who had served the Eastern Roman Empire. With him were his younger brother, Guilliam, and two closed mouth retainers. The four had kept to themselves the whole trip from the coast and had hardly said ten words to anyone.

Rick looked over the caravansary as they rode in. It covered a dozen or so acres and was enclosed by a high wall with towers at each corner. Most of it was open space so that caravans would have room for their vehicles and animals. The far end contained living quarters for the staff and any guests, while the three other sides were for storage of food, fodder and everything that the caravans might need. There were two groups of soldiers in sight. A pair of soldiers that worked for the caravansary were stationed in each tower. There was also a troop of cavalry present. From the colors on their shields, Rick recognized them as the comitatus, or bodyguards, of the Exarch of Ifriqiya as Africa was known locally. It looked like the cavalry was getting ready to leave.

"Don't worry." The friendly voice of Father Iago said." The Exarch's troops will keep any raiders faraway."

Rick and the father had stuck up an odd friendship. Normally a warrior like Rick and a scholar like Iago would have never had anything in common. But Iago was interested in geography and was going to St. Jerome's to learn of ancient voyages down the coast of Africa and beyond. Rick had trouble not telling the monk all about Africa, the Americas, Asia and all the rest of the world, but he managed to give the father a few hints.

Rick nodded. "We're well enough armed that we don't have to worry, I think."

Iago gave Rick an odd look. "Yes, you and your ladies are quite well armed. I don't believe I've ever heard of that outside of the tales of warrior maidens, who are always from some land far, far away. "

"Lady Kate is my only lady. The other two are her sisters."

Iago nodded, but then something caught his eye. "They've started the fires in the bath house. By the time we're through with supper, I, for one, will be ready for a nice, hot bath."

After dinner, Rick and the three women changed from their armor into heavily embroidered silk robes and walked to the bath house. There they made an interesting discovery.

"Everybody's naked." Kate said, pulling her robe tightly around her.

"These are Roman type baths." Rick said. "They're public baths and everyone goes in the nice big pool." Indeed, the bath looked like a swimming pool, except that the water was obviously hot. Across from them were two groups, one of men and one of women. The one of woman all had their heads together and might have been gossiping. Two of the men were huddled over some sort of a board game, another was reading a scroll, two were arguing loudly in a foreign language while another tried to quiet them down and three appeared to be sound asleep. Three young men and three young women were in the bath. As the four stood there, one girl, who looked to be a teenager, walked out of the pool and strode naked past them, smiling at Rick as she did so. As she passed them she shook her long, black wet hair, getting them wet and allowing al of her assets to bounce nicely.

Simone dropped her robe. "Let them look. I need a bath." She walked into the pool, followed by an equally naked Tatiana.

"We don't have to do this." Rick said softly.

"And let that black haired bitch think I'm afraid she'll go after you? Not a chance." Kate dropped her robe and stood there for a moment, stretching, very appealingly, before walking very slowly into the water.

Rick shrugged and followed her in.

While Simone and Tatiana washed themselves, Rick and Kate stood in waist deep water and washed each other off. "We could get in trouble if we keep this up." Rick said, his wet hand over Kate's equally wet boob.

"If you keep it up, we may not be able to get out of here until everyone leaves." She teased.

"You are so getting it tonight." He teased back.

"I hope so."

"If we move to the deep end of the pool we could start now." He started to push her to the deep end.

"Hold on. That kid who flirted with you is headed for Simone and Tatiana. We should go see what she wants."

"From the way she wiggled, I'd say I already know what she wants."

Rick and Kate got to their two friends just as the girl did.

"Hello. My name is Bethesda."

They introduced themselves and waited while a now blushing Bethesda tried to speak. "I couldn't help but notice that you ladies are hairless below the neck. Is that natural with you, or is it a new fashion?"

"It is a fashion in our country." Tatiana said. "But not all women follow the fashion. It's mostly younger women."

Bethesda raised one leg out of the water to show the hair on her legs, and elsewhere. "I would imagine it's most erotic to make love with such smooth legs, but what about the armpits? Why shave there? And the pubic hair? What is making love like?"

"I think I'll go to the other end of the pool." Rick said quickly.

"Good idea." Kate said, smiling. "Bethesda and the three of us will be talking about girl stuff, Rick."

Rick moved to the end of the pool, but kept a close eye on the four women who were talking and laughing in the pool. From the looks that Bethesda was giving him, he was positive he was the subject of the conversation. He didn't know whether to be flattered or upset.

Once they were all out of the pool, and were back in their room, Kate told him all about Bethesda. She was a seventeen year old widow. Her father, a wealthy merchant based at the library of St. Jerome's had married her off at thirteen to wealthy ship owner whose fleet carried a great deal of cargo from Italy to Africa, a great deal of it going to St. Jerome's. Kate said that Bethesda had described her husband as having the sexual finesse of a wild bull, but also the stamina. However, her husband had been lost in a shipwreck, so Bethesda was a wealthy widow and enjoying every minute of it.

"We're invited to dinner at her place tonight." Kate said. "She came in on an earlier caravan, but wanted to wait for this one for protection, just in case."

"We get to eat food prepared by a seventeen year old kid?" Rick grimaced.

"We get to eat dinner prepared by her three chefs. She's wealthy, remember?"

So, dressed in their finest silk robes, he four went to dinner with Bethesda.

Bethesda was wealthy indeed. She had a gaily painted wagon for herself and two more to carry her servants and all of her belongings. A canopy had been stretched between two of the wagons to keep off rain or heat, neither of which were present. Instead of chairs or couches, each one of them sat on large silk pillows filled with raw silk. Lanterns lit the area up like it was daytime and each guest had a bottle of wine beside then. A servant sat in a corner and worked a large overhead fan that cooled them. As soon as they sat, the servants brought out the first course. Seven courses later, everyone was stuffed and Castle was wondering how Bethesda managed to stay so slim and trim.

As if reading his mind, Kate asked, "You can't possibly eat like this every meal, can you?"

The girl laughed. "I do this once a week. In between I eat healthy meals and I exercise. A Persian who works for my father has taught me some exercises called yoga, which he learned from the land of the Hind, many leagues across the Erythraean Sea."

"We do yoga." Kate said. Or at least Simone and I do. Tatiana?"

That led to a long discussion about how best to keep one's slim and girlish figure. While Castle was all in favor of slim and girlish figures, he preferred watching them to listening how to keep them. His mind wandered.

"Castle?" Kate said, attracting his attention. "We're you listening to me?"

"Sort of." He lied.

Kate smiled at him. "Bethesda is interested in shaving her legs and….other parts. While I'm sure you'd find it fascinating…."

"I'll take a little stroll." Castle got up and walked away. He had only gone a few paces when he ran into Father Iago. "Finished with your meal, Sir Richard? It smells like it was a very good one. Would you care to walk with me?"

Father Iago led him out of the caravansary gate. Ahead of them, they saw a figure in a brown monk's robe walking to a small woods. "Why, that's Brother George. We must talk to him. He's an expert on geography. He may know something about those islands off the coast of Ifriqiya that you spoke of. Come."

Once they got there, the woods appeared to be larger that Rick had expected. "We could get lost in there. Maybe we should…."

He felt something pressing into his back. "A 9mm will go right through you, so keep walking." Father Iago had spoken in English.

The two walked a hundred yards or so into the woods until they came to a small clearing. In the clearing was Brother George. He sat in a small chair with another facing him. By his side was a bottle of wine. Castle, pushed by Iago sat in the chair.

"What do you want, Brother George? Although I'm guessing you're no brother."

Brother George proved him right by pushing back the hood. Castle was faced with a mass of chestnut curls, hazel eyes and a familiar smile. "I really don't have the equipment to be a brother."

"You're…" He began, then stopped. There were an infinite number of Earths and probably a near infinite number of Kate Becketts.

"What's your full name?" She asked.

"Richard Edgar Castle."

"And your name before that?"

"Richard Alexander Rodgers, but I think you know that."

"Your mother is….?"

"Martha Rodgers, my daughter is Alexis Castle and my wife is Katherine Houghton Beckett Castle."

"And the other women with you?"

"Other Kate Becketts. One was born Kathleen Beckett on an Earth where the steam engine was the wonder of the age. The other is the child of Jim and Johanna Beckett, Irish revolutionaries who had to flee to the Soviet Union. They changed their name to Beckov and called their daughter Tatiana."

The Kate across from him nodded. "What Earth do you come from?"

He shook his head. "I have no idea. We don't know about all of the alternate universes, so we think our Earth is the only one. I don't know what the people who call themselves Earth One call us, nor what the Earths controlled by Demming call us, or anyone else." Castle caught something in her expression. "You're not from either of those Earths. You're another player entirely."

Her face became blank. "I'll ask he questions. Why didn't you shoot me? You had your gun pointed at my heart and you moved it at the last second. Why?"

"I couldn't shoot a Kate Beckett."

"Why not?"

"Because I love you."

She laughed. "You don't even know me. How can you love me?"

"I've met lots of Kates and they all want their Rick Castles and all Ricks want a Kate Beckett. They all love each other. I've loved every Kate I've ever met. Not like I love my wife Kate, but I love all of them, including you."

"You don't know me, Mr. Castle." She said coldly.

"Let me guess. You're educated and your parents had money, I'll bet. Oh, not a lot, but enough. But something happened. Your mother was murdered, I'll guess. And that changed you."

"My mother wasn't murdered." She snapped.

"Johanna Beckett is alive?"

She shook her head. "My mother killed herself because of what she'd had to do. My father drank himself to death because of that. And I became….I became the kind of person that would shoot two hostages to try to force my enemies to attack me on my terms."

"I am not your enemy, Kate." As he said that, he thought back to the night in Singapore. "You could have shot me, too. But you recognized me. You called me by name. You know a Rick Castle in your world, don't you? "

"As I said, I ask the questions here."

"You do know Rick Castle." That was not a question.

She nodded.

"Are you together?"

"Of course not!" She snapped.

"Is he married? With someone else? Is he seeing one bimbo after another?"

She looked away from him.

"He isn't dating at all. He's waiting for you, isn't he?"

"Richard Castle would never want someone like me. Why do you keep spouting these silly fantasies?"

"Because I know both you and Castle. All of you. Give him a chance. Let him past those walls of yours."

She was upset, but managed to control herself. "What is your mission here?"

"I'm looking for another me. You should be looking for another me as well."'

"What will you do when you find him?"

Castle shrugged. "Talk to him, I guess." He lowered his voice. "You could be happy. You deserve to be happy. Allow yourself to be happy. "

She stood up suddenly. "There's nothing here for us." She said to Iago. "Get the horses."

Without another word, Iago led him back out of the woods. Four riders, all wearing brown monks' robes waited with two riderless horses and two pack horses.

"Remember what I said." Castle called to her as she rode off. She didn't look back.

Castle trudged back to the caravansary and rounded up Kate, Simone and Tatiana.

Kate was enraged when he told them what had happened. "You can't take a gun, Montgomery said. People will notice if something goes wrong. Suppose you lose one? The next time we take one of his little trips, we're going by tank. Or maybe with an armored division. Or two!"

Rick got Kate to settle down eventually. "There are two things I'm curious about. I'm sure that this Kate wasn't from any of the nations that can go between alternate Earths that we know about. And I'm pretty sure she had no desire to kill me or hurt me. So, who is she? Who does she work for? Why did her mom kill herself?"

Kate leaned over and kissed him. "I love that you're so invested in the lives of the other Kates. But right now, I don't give a damn. Okay? Now, we need to get to bed. We're leaving tomorrow."


	16. Chapter 16

I, Spy

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: You can learn much at a library, but not that I own Castle. Rating: M, here and there. Time: The future.

 **Chapter Sixteen. Death at St. Jerome's.**

Castle sat on his horse as the caravan passed him, looking down at the scene before him. Lake Tsana he had been told was a good twenty five miles long, although these were Roman miles of a thousand paces, and, at the most, two miles across.

He nodded to Kate as she rode up beside him. "It looks like something out of the movies, _Cleopatra_ , maybe. All shining white marble buildings, running along the lakeshore for miles, interspersed with groves of trees and gardens to walk or sit in while you read ancient texts. I expect Liz Taylor to be on one of those boats out in the lake, ready to make her grand entrance."

"I'm sure she'd have a much larger boat than those. They're kind of small."

"Mere details. Bohemond said the main library is halfway between the north and south ends of the lake. He also says the best place for people like us is right next door to the main building."

"Let's say goodbye to Bohemond and Bethesda and go there, then, Library Boy."

Rick tried to look offended. "Please, that's Library Man."

In a few minutes Rick and the three women were riding on a paved street that had heavy vehicle and animal traffic. The people on foot were on wide sidewalks on either side of the roads. Not all of the buildings were libraries. They passed rowdy taverns and comfortable inns, interspersed with stores selling every imaginable item, each with a leather lunged shop assistant calling out the type and price of the items inside. Once, they had to stop as a troupe of acrobats danced and wove through the traffic, managing to avoid wagons and horses by mere inches while doing back flips, cartwheels, and handstands. Rick threw their leader, a scantily dressed Asian woman a gold coin.

She bowed low to Rick. "Many thanks, Great Lord." She gave him a saucy smile. "Perhaps I can show you more tricks?"

Rick laughed. "My wife keeps me well entertained."

She ran her eye over the three women with Rick. "You might appreciate a lady for once, as opposed to the Amazons you ride with."

Kate looked at her chain mail hauberk, but then smiled. "I'm all the lady he can handle, and he's all the man I can handle." Kate tossed the woman another gold coin. "But thank you for reminding me of how I need to act tonight."

Eventually, they arrived at the grandest marble library of them all. Although only some four stories tall, it took up what Rick estimated would have estimated as three or four New York City blocks. Next to it was a rambling, grey stone building with a thatched roof, surrounded by trees. This they had been told was the best inn in all of St. Jerome's.

"We should find us some rooms, eat, get dressed and then go to the library." Rick said. When the four walked in the innkeeper raised an eyebrow at his disheveled would-be guests. "Sir, perhaps you and your….women would be more comfortable elsewhere?"

Rick smiled and pulled a large and heavy bag from inside his mail hauberk. From it he poured gold coins. "I am easily satisfied with the very best that you have."

The innkeeper bowed low. "Of course you are, sir. The Imperial Suite?"

"Is there anything better?" Kate demanded.

"Not in all of St. Jerome's."

"Then it will serve."

The innkeeper bowed even lower. "Welcome to the Inn of St. George. I am called Rais and I exist to serve you, Lord."

Word of the wealthy Sir Richard Castle had apparently reached the library. When they arrived there, now fed, bathed and dressed in their best clothing, the head of the library, Father Rolf, met them personally. "Sir Richard. We are so glad to have a scholar of your eminence here. How may we serve you? Please, come into my office and have a glass of wine. Your ladies, as well, of course."

While drinking a very good red wine, Rick pulled out two forged letters of introduction from eminent churchmen in England. If Father Rolf ever decided to check their authenticity, it would be months before an answer came back. However, Father Rolf wasn't interested in the fine vellum documents he was briefly scanning. His eyes were on the bag of gold on Rick's belt.

Rick reached inside his silk garment and pulled out a small package. "I do want the libraries to prosper, so I thought a small gif might be in order." He pushed the package to Father Rolf who looked at it with disappointment.

"Any gift no matter how small…"The father began, stopping when he saw the contents of the parcel. "Are those…."

Rick nodded, "Four emeralds, four rubies and four diamonds. I hope this will help the fine libraries at St. Jerome's?"

Father Rolf was overcome with…Let's just say he was overcome. "Thank you, Sir Richard. This is…unprecedented. It's unbelievable. What do you intend to do, first?" He asked as he swept the gems into a drawer in his desk.

"We thought we'd just take a look around. Get the lay of the land, so to speak."

"I'll have one of the master librarians accompany you. Two, perhaps would be better."

Rick waved off the offer. "We'd prefer to just wander about by ourselves for now."

"Certainly. Certainly. And if you need anything, anything at all, just come to me."

The four of them left Father Rolf's office and walked through the library. Not only were the buildings of the finest marble, but the floors were covered by expensive carpets, and the walls were covered in murals, most of which seemed to represent major donors to the library. There were also small gardens scattered throughout the place where one could rest and read.

It was entering one such garden that Rick literally ran into a young lady, knocking her down.

"A thousand pardons, Great Lord. I foolishly ran into you."

Rick shook his head. "No, it was my fault. I ran into you. What's your name?"

"I am called Alexis, Great Lord."

Once the girl had stood up, Rick could tell she wasn't his Alexis. Her hair was a mousy brown and her eyes a muddy brown. Her skin was tanned and she was taller and more slender than his daughter. "I am not a great lord. Indeed, the great lords of my country would be upset if they heard that you'd called me that. So, just call me Rick."

"Rick?" The girl said, unsure of how to react.

"What do you do here?"

"I am a servant and when I can I study."

"What do you study?"

"Everything…Rick. Everything I can read."

"What languages do your know?" He asked, curiously.

"Latin, of course, and Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, the language of Our Lord Jesus, Persian and I have some knowledge of the language of the Franks, the Hinds and the land of the Han."

"I assume that you aid scholars, then."

She shook her head. "Oh, no, Sir Rick. It would be unseemly for a woman to work with scholars. No scholar would want that."

"I don't know about that. We do unseemly quite well. How much would it cost to hire you as our translator?"

"Are you serious?" Alexis looked as if they would start laughing at her at any second.

"Of course. What do you charge for translator services?"

"I don' know. I've never been hired to translate before."

"We'll find out what other translators charge and pay you the same." Kate suggested.

"So, Alexis, show us he library."

Alexis took them to the center of the main library and pointed to where all the sections were. There were sections for mathematics, poetry, philosophy, fiction, history, geography, religious works and more.

Alexis took them outside. "The main library of St. Jerome's has the best of every discipline. Others may be more, or less, specialized. Across the lake, can you see the building with the red roof? That's the library of St. Mark's of Venice. One of the Venetian Doges left his library to St. Jerome's. it's very eclectic, I'm afraid the Doge was more interested in impressing people with how much he'd spent on his library rather than its contents. Now, to our left, do you see a building with a large number of statues in front of it?"

They turned, looked and nodded.

"That's the library of St. Francis. They specialize in books about animals and they have a menagerie as well. While the hundreds of animals they have are fascinating, you should stay down wind if at all possible."

"Where are your favorite places in the main library?" Tatiana asked. "Show us."

Alexis took them back inside. She led them to the second floor to a room full of maps. "I like to look at the maps and imagine what it must be like to travel. I've never been more than a few miles from here."

"Why not?" Rick asked.

"Where would I go that's more exciting than here?"

They looked over the maps and decided that while the maps of Western Europe and North Africa were quite accurate, the further you got away, the less accurate the maps were and the Americas were missing entirely.

As Alexis led them away, Rick saw a colorful book on a table in a small ante room. "Hey, look. A comic book."

"A what?" Alexis asked.

"Um, a graphic novel." He picked it up and saw that the text was in Greek. One page was a bulky barbarian type confronting a sexy queen in a filmy dress.

Alexis took it from him. "Allow me to read it to you. " _Rodrigo felt his prick hardening as he gazed at the firm, ripe breasts of the captive queen, knowing he would take her virginity as soon…"_

Castle grabbed the book away. "That's enough of that one." He said, reddening.

"I assure you I was reading it correctly." Alexis said.

"I'm sure you were, but…Um…."

"These are written by Timeon of Athens. We get new ones several times a month. I read them to get ideas for the men I'm with." Alexis ran her hand over Rick's chest. "I learned a very interesting trick several books ago. It's one I can share with you and your ladies as well."

Now Rick was turning bright red. "Um, you mean you….Uh, with men….and…Um."

Alexis nodded. "I have sex with strangers for money. That's all part of my service. You won't have to pay extra. And I assure you that while I might not be the prettiest, I am quite skillful. To be honest, there isn't much in the way of competition around here. If you'd like a demonstration, there's a small private alcove not far from here."

Rick put his hand on her shoulder. "I'm happily married. I have sex with my wife and no one else. I don't need or want you to have sex with me. Okay?"

Alexis shrugged. "I had assumed that since you traveled with three women that you'd need…."

"Lady Kate provides all of my needs." Rick was turning redder by the second.

"Perhaps we can continue with our tour?" Kate said sweetly, trying not to laugh at Rick.

For the rest of the tour, Rick made sure he kept Kate between him and Alexis.

Rick checked the water clock in one of the gardens. "It's getting to be about dinner time. Alexis, you should come to eat with us at the inn next door. And we'll get you a place to sleep." Seeing her smile he quickly added, "In a bed all by yourself."

Back at the inn, one of the patrons recognized Alexis. "Alexis! What are you doing here, child?"

Alexis smiled at the chubby churchman. "Father Padraig, how good to see you. I'm working as a translator for a man from your end of the world. Father Padraig, of Connaught, this is Sir Richard Castle, of Brittania and his wife, Lady Kate and her sisters, Ladies Simone and Tatiana."

Father Padraig looked Rick over, then the women, then turned to Alexis. "Does your work involve anything that would require you to tell me about it in confession, child?"

"I'm not fucking any of them, Father. I'm just translating."

The father colored slightly and nodded, "Praise be to God for small favors." He looked at Rick, now smiling. "Where in Britannia are you from?"

"Kent." Rick replied. "But I travel a great deal. I've never been to Ireland, though."

Father Padraig shook his head. "Nor have I been to Kent. Although I knew a priest from….Where was it? York?"

"Nowhere near us, I'm afraid. What are your interests, Father?"

"Oh, I'm fascinated by all of the amazing stories of the world beyond Europe, the Levant and North Africa. I've read of tales of Persian sailors who's sailed down the wondrous East Coast of Ifriqiya and they describe wonders beyond the imagination. They speak of horses with necks so long that they cannot put their heads on the ground. Elephants, such as come from the lands of the Hinds, but roaming in vast herds, and great beasts that live in the water, but can smash a boat to bits and kill the crew. And the people! They say there is a nation whose soldiers attack with their shields interlocked, much as we make a shield wall. Could they not be the descendants of Roman soldiers who once formed the _testudo_ , or tortoise, with their shields? And they also speak of nations that eat the flesh of their enemies. But, they say that deep in the continent is a great queen who rules over a Christian kingdom of great wealth and power. We're I less bulky, I'd go south now and see them." He laughed. "Perhaps it's best I remain here. For certainly the flesh eaters would come for me."

"I'd like to read some of those stories. "Rick said. "I too have heard tales and perhaps I can comment." He knew his geographical knowledge was superior to local knowledge and he could describe some of the animals of Africa to Father Padraig.

"Excellent. Most of the texts have been translated into Latin, and the rest are in Greek. Alexis can translate those for you." Father Padraig looked about. "Where is that girl, anyway?"

The five of them searched, expecting to find Alexis curled up with a good book somewhere. She finally arrived in the company of young man who quickly left. "See you next week, Petros, same time, same price." Alexis called after him.

Castle groaned. "You didn't….Yes, you did, didn't you?"

Alexis looked at him with a puzzled expression on her face. "You said you didn't want me and he's a regular. I can hardly turn him down. It's bad for business."

Rick sighed heavily. "We should see about dinner."

Once Rick and Kate were in bed together that night, Rick spoke. "What are we going to do about Alexis?"

"What can we do?"

"We could take her back to New York with us." He said hopefully.

"So she can turn tricks at the New York Public Library? Good thinking."

"We have plenty of jewels left. We can set her up so that she doesn't have to sleep with guys to get by."

"Castle, girls who end up in the sex industry usually have a lot of problems before they ever try sex. It looks like…"

"Don't call it the sex industry. It makes it sound like she's selling….coffee at a Starbucks or something."

"Okay. But there are women selling themselves all over this Earth and on millions more Earths. But this is an Alexis, so she means something to you. So, we'll give her the jewels and gold coins when we leave. She'll probably use it to set up the best brothel in all of St. Jerome's, but it'll give her a chance at a better life later, okay?"

"I guess." Castle grumped.

"Now we need to get to sleep. We're going across the lake to see Montgomery's contact here." She ran a hand over his bare chest. "Unless you have other ideas."

He had several other ideas.

The next day, they headed across the lake. Rais, the innkeeper, had been asked to organize their transport. He had provided a boat propelled by twenty muscular oarsmen. Rick, Kate, Simone, Tatiana and now Alexis sat under a canopy at the stern while three attractive young women, all fully dressed per Kate's instructions, attended to them. One fanned them, a second poured their wine from several carafes, and the third handed them dainty sweets from an assortment of trays.

"Now this is the way to travel." Rick said. He switched to English. "I'd love to arrive at a crime scene in one of these. Ryan and Espo would freak."

"It might be a little tough to get through rush hour traffic." Kate said. "But I could get used to it."

When they reached the other side, they found a large crowd around the library of St. Denis where Montgomery's people were.

"They seem to be busy today." Rick commented.

"They're here to see a great wonder, Lord Rick." Alexis said, excitedly. "Inside is a clever machine that can produce a whole printed page in less time than it would take a monk to prepare his pen. Is it not wonderful?"

"What won't they think of next?" Rick laughed.

The traveling monks with their machine had been warned to expect Rick and the ladies. A burly monk pushed the crowd aside and brought the five of them inside. There, in the foyer of the library a hand press was turning out the pages of a book as all who could crowd inside watched and oohed and aahed.

Alexis was left to watch the press with the rest went to see the monks.

"Sorry to have to tell you this, sir." Said the head of the research team. "But Derrick Storm is gone." He got here about a month, maybe two, ago and was pretty much under the radar. We wouldn't have caught it, but we caught the signature of a transfer engine and they traced the pattern to his. We checked around and found he'd spent all of his time at the Library of Philosophy at the north end of the lake. He took a whole bunch of books with him, presumably on philosophy, but no one knows which ones."

"Don't they keep records of who takes out what?" Castle asked.

"They do. But Storm apparently paid off a guy who liked to drink. All he knew is that Storm paid him to look the other way while he made off with a big bag full of books. They could do a complete inventory, but books get lost, stolen and misplaced all the time. They'd never know which ones he took."

They spent the day talking to the "monks" and hearing what they'd found. Rick even bought a book by Julius Caesar and one by the Emperor Augustus that had been lost in his time. He'd figure out some way to get them to the New York Public Library where they'd be sure to cause a sensation.

Tired and happy, they returned to their inn.

Castle woke up the next morning when a screaming Alexis ran into their room, naked and wet. He did notice that for a skinny, underfed girl, she was more pulchritudinous than he'd have thought.

"Lord, you have to come right now." Alexis screamed.

He put his hand on Kate's head, which was resting on his stomach. "That's what I had in mind." He mumbled. "Could you go get dressed and we can discuss….whatever over breakfast?"

"This is serious, Lord Castle. Father Padraig is dead. He's been murdered. Petros brought me the news while I was bathing. We must go to him."

"Murdered?" Kate said, sleepily. "We should go see what we can do."

What they could do was apparently very little. Dozens of people were gathered around Father Padraig's body, tracking blood everywhere. Simone and Tatiana managed to push all of the spectators out of the little alcove in the library where the deceased was.

"His throat was cut. A nice professional job and I'll bet the murder weapon is the blade on the floor by him. Not that we could prove it one way or another. "Kate said. " From how cold he is and the clotting of the blood, he's been dead for several hours. Maybe five or six at the most."

'"No point in looking for fingerprints or DNA. We have no database to compare anything to and no way to do a comparison."

"Oh my god! What has happened here?" Father Rolf, the head of the Library was standing there, his mouth agape.

"Father Padraig has been murdered. My wife and I have some experience in this. May we assist in the investigation?"

Father Rolf was terrified at what the local Bishop might say. If the strangers found the killer, he could tell the Bishop and take the credit. If they failed, it would be all their fault. "Of course, you have my permission to do anything necessary."

"Did the father have any enemies?" Kate asked.

Father Rolf looked around. "Not that I know of. Does anyone here know Father Padraig better than I?"

A monk stepped forward. "His uncle was the High King of Tara, back in Ireland. But there were sons and brothers that stood between Padraig and the throne. He had no enemies here."

Everyone seemed to agree that Padraig was loved by all.

"What was Father Padraig studying?" Rick asked.

A skinny boy raised his hand. "I have a cart full of books that he had been reading. I was taking them back when I heard the screams."

"Bring the books back here. I'll look at them to see if that yields any clues."

"If we may remove the body?" Father Rolf asked. Kate nodded.

The young man strode purposely off. He returned fifteen minutes later pushing a very large cart. "I'm sorry, Sir Richard. But other servants emptied Father Padraig's books into this cart along with books that other scholars were reading. We have no way of telling which were Father Padraig's, and which weren't."

Rick groaned. "All of those?"

The young man nodded. "There are a lot of scholars on this floor, sir."

"I'd like to try to talk to anyone who might have seen Father Padraig last night or this morning and anyone who knows him well." Kate said.

"I can help." Alexis said.

"We'll go too." Simone said. Tatiana nodded.

"Will you be okay alone, babe?"

"Now that the whole place is up, awake and overcome with morbid curiosity, I'll be fine."

Kate kissed him and the ladies went off.

Rick tried to get comfortable on the marble seat by the cart. Luckily the skinny kid came by with a cushion and stood there until Rick figured out a tip was in order.

"Thank you, Lord Castle." The kid said as he rushed off to tell everyone what an over tipper Castle was.

Rick settled down and grabbed the first book. It was a text on astronomy, but he leafed through it anyway. The next was a book by a traveler who had claimed to have been to India. The book was full of drawings of six legged tigers, pythons the size of eighteen wheelers and elephants with hands on the ends of their trunks. Just the sort of thing Father Padraig would have loved, but I held no clues to his death. Rick kept reading until a young lady came by with small cart of food. He checked the water clock nearby and found that it was lunch time. He bought several sandwiches, a bottle of wine and a cake of some sort and began reading and eating.

Suddenly, something caught his eye. It was a drawing of three men who appeared to be carrying weapons that looked a lot like AK 47s. He read the text, which was in Latin. It described the weapons as using a form of magical fire to expel lead pellets that could kill at a range of three hundred paces. "This is it." He said. "Someone is on the world with modern weapons."

He saw he rope flash across his eyes and then felt it tighten across his neck. A voice whispered in his ear. "I'll enjoy this, so I'll kill you very, very slowly." As air was cut off, he felt and heard a thump behind him and the pressure stopped.

"Are you okay?" A familiar voice asked.

"Kate. Am I glad to see you. How…" This Beckett was dressed as a servant girl in a white dress. "You're the other Beckett. And he's…" Castle looked down. Under the beard and longer hair, it was Javier Esposito. "Espo. Every time I come to one of these cockamamie worlds, Espo is a bad guy and he gets killed."

"Are you okay?" She repeated, pulling her knife from Javier's back.

"Couldn't be better. " He replied sarcastically.

"Did all of those Richard Castles always love those Kate Becketts?" She whispered. "Really and truly?"

"Everyone I ever met."

She kissed him. "Then wish me luck." She was gone out of the room and when Castle went into the hallway to look for her, she was gone.

Castle took the book and went in search of Kate.

"She kissed you?" Kate asked.

Castle had found Father Rolf before he found Kate. He led Rolf back to Espo's body and gave Rolf an edited version of what had happened, leaving out anything about another Kate. Then he had found Kate, Simone, Tatiana and Alexis and gone back to their rooms at the inn. Alexis was sent off and Rick explained what had happened. Kate's first question surprised him.

"I didn't kiss her back."

"You let her kiss you?"

"She saved my life. Besides, I think that she's headed for her own Rick."

"Why does everyone get a Rick but me?' Simone asked, sadly.

"I don't have one either." Tatiana commiserated.

"And mine kisses other Kates."

"Can we concentrate on the murder?" Rick asked. "Someone came to this Earth and brought something like an AK 47 with them. This is date stamped as coming into the library in June 1909 Common Era, which is by the Julian calendar that they still use here. But that's still over a century ago. And, the only people we know of that know about alternate Earths are the Earth One people and Montgomery's pals. And they haven't had this technology for a century."

"That means there's another player out there." Kate said. "Someone else that can travel between Earths and has been able to do so for a long, long time."

Rick nodded. "I think Father Padraig ran across the story about the AK 47 and got curious. He started asking questions and when word got around, the AK 47 people came and killed him. And when I found out about it, they tried to kill me, too."

"So why did your kissing friend save you?" Kate asked.

"She's not my…" Rick stopped when he saw the mischievous look in Kate's eyes. "Maybe there are two other groups who can travel between Earths. Maybe a lot of things. I don't know. But Derrick Storm isn't here anymore and we don't need to hang around anymore, either.

As expected, when Rick gave Alexis all of their spare gems and gold, she was ecstatic and began planning the best brothel on the planet. Rick just sighed.

The next day they rode off into the desert to be picked up by a helicopter and returned to a submarine.


	17. Chapter 17

I, Spy

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: It's so hot that I don't own Castle. Rating: M, here and there. Time: The future.

 **Chapter Seventeen. Baked Alaska.**

"That's Alaska?" Castle asked, looking at the photos. "Guys in aloha shirts and shorts and women in bikinis?"

"Global warming." Montgomery replied. "And we think Derrick Storm, our Derrick Storm, has been there. We picked up his transfer device's signals."

"So?' Kate asked.

"What's left of the human race on this Earth is clustered around the land north of the Arctic Circle and there are a few in Antarctica. Not many people survived, you'll understand. So, if you and Rick go here, people will stop you and ask if you have a twin brother if anyone of them have seen Storm. Will you do it?"

"We can't go back home?" Kate asked wearily.

"Not until we get our Derrick Storm back. It'd be too dangerous."

"Okay, we'll go." Rick said after sharing a look with Kate.

"Me too." Simone said.

"Me three." Tatiana added.

"Look, these trips are dangerous…" Rick began.

"And you are like the brother and sisters I never had." Simone said. "I will not stay behind."

Tatiana nodded. "Let's face it. The three of you are all I have. I can't go back to Russia, I'm a traitor there. And, I admit you are like family to me."

"You won't be going in alone." Montgomery said. "It's way too dangerous. We're getting you a ship and a crew. The ship is a sailing ship with an auxiliary electric motor. The sails act as solar panels and collect the energy that goes into your storage batteries. You'll have lights, refrigeration, in short, all the power you need. The ship will be armed, of course. And we've searched through the SEALs and managed to find a crew that's capable of operating a sailing vessel. Their commander is a Lieutenant Steve Ho. You'll meet him soon. Now, we have to start your briefing,"

The _Katherine the Great_ edged towards the shabby dock where a half a dozen people stood waiting. Rick and Kate stood on the quarterdeck with Lt. Ho, Simone and Tatiana. Their crew manned their weapons, just in case, although Barrow was supposed to be a law abiding town. But you never knew.

As they pulled closed to the dock, Rick could see that the locals were sporting tee shirts, shorts and weapons. Lots of weapons.

Finally the ship bumped up against the dock and two of the crew jumped off to tie the ship up. The locals stayed where they were. The crew put the gangplank over the side and Rick, Kate and Tatiana walked off the ship. Tatiana looked different. Her hair had been dyed a whitish blonde, her eyes had been dyed green and her boobs had been temporarily made larger. Her very tight tee shirt with no bra pretty much assured that any male who looked at her wouldn't notice the resemblance with Kate and Simone, although they had a plan for that, too.

"Afternoon, everyone." Rick said. "I'm Rick Castle, captain and owner of the _Katherine the Great._ This is my wife Kate, and her cousin Tatiana."

A burly, bearded man stepped forward. "I'm Tom Jeffords. Back before, I used to be a soldier. They've found me useful around here." He tapped the assault rifle hanging from his shoulder. "What brings you folks here?"

"Trade. We were working on the north coast of Siberia. That's where Tatiana comes from, by the way. We have a lot of stuff. Electrical wire, computers, some weapons and ammo, optics, and more. We have a catalogue on our tablet." Castle handed the tablet over. "We were thinking of heading south and seeing if we can pick up anything useful in the old US or Canada."

"Doubt it." Said a weather beaten Inuit." Everything north of San Francisco has been picked over pretty good. Anything south of that and you'll fry. Fry good."

Rick smiled. "You never know. We found an old Russian sub with just the top of her sail awash at low tide in the Ob River estuary. All of the locals said there was nothing there. A lot of crap had washed down the river and covered over the sail, but Tatiana saw some metal. She has great eyes."

"That's not the only great things she has." Muttered a man.

"Anyway, we got some useful stuff from her. Need a diesel generator? You boys still have oil I hear?"

The Inuit stepped forward. "Maybe we can use a diesel generator, maybe we can't. Maybe we'd need to see it."

"Actually the Council is going to need to see it." A man said.

"Sure, George. But I'm the only member of the Council here now. I should look."

The man shrugged. "Whatever you say, Thomas."

The Inuit held out his hand. "I'm Thomas Mackintosh." He grinned at them. "Granddad was a Scot come here to work and stayed." He looked over Rick's shoulder at the _Katherine the Great_. "Did you say you had some electrical cable? We could use some of that. We have a power plant, but we need more cable."

"You can look at our catalogue at your leisure. In the meantime, I'd like to get ashore and have a meal, look around, get an idea of what's going on here."

"Sure, bring your people ashore. We'll be happy to show you a good time. Do you like whale meat?"

"Never had any. And only half the crew will be coming ashore at any one time."

"Not a trusting fellow are you?"

"Not a bit."

Mackintosh laughed. "Smart fellow. Looks like you got weapons on your ship. You'll need them."

"Why?"

"That bastard Slaughter. He's a damned pirate and looter. He won't attack here, 'cause we got too many people and guns. But, he'll attack smaller ships and smaller towns all around this part of the Arctic Ocean. You'd best stay well away from him."

Barrow looked like a cross between a small American town, with cinder block and clapboard buildings, an Inuit settlement with sealskin tents, and something out of the Old West or a Mad Max movie with rusty house trailers and slapped together shacks.

Mackintosh took them to the best restaurant in town. "Well, we only have two. I think Mike's is the best, but plenty of people go to Ida's."

"Well, we'll go to Mike's and see what happens." Rick said.

Something happened about three minutes after they got to Mike's. They were at the bar, buying a round when a burly, sunburned blond guy turned Rick around and punched him in the jaw. As Rick went down, both Kate and Tatiana turned on the attacker. Although unplanned, Kate went high, punching at the man's throat and Tatiana went low, kicking at his knee cap. He managed to block Kate, but Tatiana heard a satisfying crunch and the man went down.

Before anything else happened, two large bouncers separated the women from their victim. "Now just relax." Said the biggest bouncer. "We're a community of laws, here and we expect people to act like it. Now Hank and I both saw him drop your man without any cause, but you can't just beat on him. Okay?"

"I got plenty of cause, damn them. That bastard and his redheaded bitch robbed me blind over by Cambridge Bay off Victoria Island. Six months ago it was."

"My husband was off the Ob River in Siberia six months ago. We've been nowhere near the Canadian Arctic, ever."

"Lying bitch. You ain't his woman."

"The hell I'm not."

Mackintosh pushed his way through the crowd. "What's going on here?"

Everyone began yelling at once. "Quiet!" Mackintosh yelled, but no one paid any attention. Mackintosh waved his hands in the air and a dozen men converged on the spot. The crowd quieted down.

Mackintosh looked around. "Now, those who have a stake in this will go with me and my friends and go back in the back. Everyone else, go back to what you were doing. Now!"

The bouncers had to carry the injured man back to the back of Mike's. He cursed at Tatiana every step of the way.

"Henry, "Mackintosh said, "You say one more word about that lady, and I'll ask Frank to break your other damned knee."

"But she…" He began.

"Shut up." One of the bouncers said, menacingly.

Two tables were dragged together and Rick, Kate, Tatiana and Simone sat on one side and Henry, who they found out was named Larson, sat on the other. The bouncers sat between the two and glared at everyone impartially.

Mackintosh now did his own glaring. "Okay, let's find out what happened. Henry, you tell your story and no one interrupt him. Except me, of course. Go ahead."

"Six months ago I was fishing on my boat off Victoria Island and this bastard comes up on me…."

"No swearing, Henry."

Henry glared at Mackintosh, but went on. "It was night, so I couldn't see him coming. He jumped onto my boat from his and whacked me in the face and then kicked me hard. Pulled a gun and told me to stay down. He grabbed my shotgun and pumped all of my diesel fuel into his boat. Do you know how much diesel costs these days? And then he took all of my fish. I could see his damned…Excuse me, I could see his woman. She just laughed at me. Told me if I moved, she'd come aboard and cut my pecker off."

"Nighttime was it?" Mackintosh asked. "Really dark?"

"Yeah, but I seen his face good."

"You been drinking, Henry?"

"Just a bit. To take the edge off. Hard work, you know."

Mackintosh nodded. "You can tell your story now, Mr. Castle."

"I've never been to Victoria Island in my life. I was off Siberia six months ago. I never saw Mr. Larson before in my life. There are no redheaded women on my ships and Kate is my wife. I don't need diesel fuel, my ship has an electric motor that runs off of solar panels in the sails. And I have a big ship. I don't know how big his ship is, but if one man can run it, it's a lot smaller than the _Katherine_. And, I have a large, well armed crew. If I wanted to take a boat, I'd take the whole thing."

Mackintosh nodded. "Mind if I check your ship, Mr. Castle? Look for Russian goods, and your power supply?"

"Be my guest."

An hour later they were back in Mike's and the court, or whatever it was, was back in session.

Mackintosh spoke. "Henry, I think you believe this man wronged you, but you probably didn't get that good a look at him. And it's only your word this happened."

"Jesus, Mac, I gotta…"

"Henry, don't say a damned word. Now this feller has a lot of Russian goods which supports his claim to have been off Siberia. And he don't need any diesel fuel and if he wanted it, he'd a killed you and took your whole boat. I don't see you got a case at law here. Now if you want to take his up with the full Council, that's your right. Now, we should get you to the hospital and have that knee looked at. We're done here."

The rest of the bar seemed to have lost interest in what was happening and let Rick and the ladies eat in peace. Over the next few days Rick did some buying and selling and discovered that the Arctic nations had a fairly sophisticated banking system.

They had found a bed and breakfast to stay in. So when Rick came back after a day of trading he was surprised to see the three women in bikinis.

"Swimming?" he asked, smiling at Kate.

"It's the Artic summer so it's still light and it's still hot. Get your suit, babe. We aren't going to wait forever."

Rick was back in five minutes and headed for the beach with his arm around Kate. "You are gorgeous."

She smiled. "Did you ever think you'd see me in a bikini above the Arctic Circle?"

"Having seen you in nothing at all…."

"Down, boy. We'll get to that later."

The beach had palm trees even, and even some surfers, both of which had come from Southern California. They found a nice stretch of beach, did a bit of swimming, then got out beach towels and worked on their tans.

As the sun got lower, it got a bit cooler. They headed for the B&B. Rick and Kate headed straight for their bedroom.

Kate smiled at him as she took of her top. "My nipples are already stiff for you. Care for a taste?" She teased, laying on the bed and pushing her boobs together.

Rick pushed his swim trunks down as Kate pushed her bikini bottoms down. He lay on top of her, supporting himself on his elbows and kissed her lips. She didn't open her mouth to let his tongue in, but pushed his head down her body. "My boobs first, then…." She never finished the sentence as Rick flicked his tongue over one nipple and then the other, moving rapidly back and forth. Then he took one boob into his mouth, getting as much in as he could, and squeezing the other boob and pinching the nipple between his thumb and forefinger.

"I love when you play with them. I just love it." She moaned.

"Me, too." He managed to say, around a mouthful of her boob.

"I love it, but move down. Tongue fuck me, Rick. Now."

"You sure?" He teased.

Her only reply was to push his head down. He laughed and scooted downwards. "My pleasure, Kate."

He put his hands on the back of her knees and pushed her legs up and out. Next he blew lightly on her slit, getting her to shiver.

"More."

"More I can do." He began licking her, beginning with her anus and moving slowly upwards to her clit, stopping to nibble on her clit for a while, then moving back downwards, only to start the whole erotic journey all over again."

"That is _so_ dirty." She said, laughing.

"And you love dirty, don't you?"

"Like the old saying, sex _is_ dirty if you're doing it right. " She reached down and gripped his hair. "And now you need to do it right. Rick. I need you inside me."

He crawled slowly up her body, being sure to touch as many of her erogenous zones as he could manage, before bringing his mouth down on hers. "Ready?" He whispered after breaking the kiss.

"I'm always ready for you, lover."

He entered her slowly, although as wet as she was, that wasn't necessary, but quickly began pounding her as fast and as hard as he could. She cooperated by wrapping her arms and legs around him and pushing herself up off the bed to get him farther into her.

"Oh, God! Castle! Yes, oh, lover, Rick….It's so good." He felt her arms and legs tighten around him and she moaned loudly. Then she relaxed for a second. "That was amazing….Oh, you still need to come." She began moving them so that she'd be on top of him. "Let me do the work, babe. " She hooked her feet under his thighs and pushed herself up and down on him until she felt the gush of wetness that told her he had come. She collapsed on top of him.

"Every time, it's the best time ever. You're amazing." He whispered.

"It's from having the perfect partner."

He pulled the sheets and blankets up around them and they slept until it was breakfast time.

When they went to breakfast, they saw Henry Larson sitting at the other end of the restaurant. Rick took Kate's arm and headed to Larson with Simone and Tatiana following.

Larson stood up. "I don't want no trouble, mister." Although he spoke to Rick, his eyes were on Tatiana.

"Neither do I, but if there's someone out there that looks a lot like me causing trouble, I want to know about it. Can we sit and talk?"

Henry Larson sat back down and waved his hand at the seats. They took this as an invitation.

"What do you remember about the man who attacked you?"

"He looked a lot like you. In the dark, that is." Larson quickly added.

"Was there anything that didn't remind you of Rick?" Tatiana asked. "His accent? Clothing? His haircut? Anything?"

Larson frowned in concentration, then shook his head. "Nope. Nothing come to mind."

"Can you tell me about his boat?"

Larson nodded. "Small, fast boat with a motor in it. But he come on me all unawares like, so maybe he has an electric motor? But he made a hell of a lot of noise leaving. Diesel, I'd imagine."

"What about the redhead you mentioned?" Rick asked, hoping it wasn't an Alexis.

Larson shrugged. "She stayed by his boat, mostly. She had a nice body, nice boobs and she laughed a lot, especially about killing me. That's about it."

"Do you know if this guy hangs around that part of the Arctic?" Simone asked.

"Don't know that he does, don't know that he don't."

They asked all the questions they could think of, but Larson had no more answers.

That afternoon Rick, the ladies and Lt. Ho, the SEAL, met on the _Katherine the Great._

"The guy who robbed Larson sounds like the other Derrick Storm. The bad one. If he only has one woman with him, we can probably take him and solve one problem."

"The Arctic Ocean is a big place." Lt. Ho warned.

"He won't come here." Tatiana shot back. "Too many people and too many guns."

They gathered all of the information they could on the US and Canadian Arctic and after almost two weeks in Barrow, they headed for Victoria Island to see if they could find the bad Derrick Storm.

Tatiana seemed to be especially interested in finding him, spending hours practicing hand to hand combat with the SEALs and shooting at targets tossed overboard.

Both Kate and Rick came up to her as she was finishing her shooting. "Can we talk to you?" Kate asked.

"Of course."

"I know how determined you are to catch Storm. I felt the same way about catching my mom's killer. For too many years, that was all I could think about. I'm incredibly lucky that Rick stayed with me for some of those years."

"Your point is?" Tatiana asked.

"I know you hate Storm, and you have a right to. Just don't let your hatred be all you are. There are people out there who love you. And people you haven't even met who will love you. Keep some room in your heart for them."

"The people who love me? I'm assuming that's you, Rick and Simone? Okay, I do love the three of you like family. But it isn't enough. I wish I could love someone like you love Rick, but there isn't anyone for me now. And I can't, I won't, change my life for some possible great love somewhere down the road." She turned and walked away from them. "I'm sorry." She said over her shoulder.

"We tried." Rick said.

"And failed."

On the morning of the third day out from Barrow they saw a ship headed to them at high speed. Ho called the crew to battle stations. Rick and the ladies went to the quarterdeck. Lt. Ho was studying the approaching ship through his binoculars.

"Looks like a 110 foot Coast Guard cutter. It can outrun us easily."

"Maybe they're friendlies." Castle said without much conviction.

Ho shook his head. "Not likely. Everyone I talked to in Barrow said any ship you meet out here is possibly and enemy. And that pirate Slaughter is supposed to have a cutter he took over."

"What do we do?"

"I plan on sinking him." Ho smiled.

The other ship was heading straight for them, which meant they were being shown the smallest possible target.

"He's signaling to use using a blinker." Ho said. "He wants us to have to and be ready to be boarded."

"Screw that." Muttered a SEAL standing nearby.

"Okay. Get the Spike ER ready." Ho ordered. Several SEALs brought out an olive drab tripod device and attached an OD tube to it."

"They're firing at us." Someone yelled.

Castle turned away from the missile being readied to look at the ship approaching them. He could see red dots head for them, going into the air and arcing into the sea several hundred yards away.

"He's probably got a 25 to 30 millimeter cannon as his main gun, plus some machine guns and small arms."

"What do we have?" Kate asked Ho.

"The Spike ER, or extended range, is a fire and forget antitank missile. It has a range of eight kilometers." Ho smiled." And it'll knock out ships as well as tanks."

"Ready." Called one of the SEALs.

"Engage."

The missile shot off of the _Katherine the Great_ and headed for the approaching ship. Castle watched as the other ship's cannon rounds came closer and closer to them as the range closed. Then there was a soft bang and a puff of smoke below the bridge of the other ship. The cannon fire stopped as well.

"He's turning away." Ho had no sooner spoke than a second missile was launched. This one guided to the hull just under the forward gun mount. The third missile hit just above the water line and started a fire.

"Look like she's lost power." Ho said.

Two more missiles were fired into the other ship.

"Looks like they're abandoning ship." Kate said.

"Put one more into the stern area." Ho commanded. "Try to knock out their engine room. But wait until their boats are well away."

Just as the last missile was fired, they heard a popping sound from the ship. "Ammo going off?" Tatiana guessed.

That was suddenly confirmed by a blast from the other ship that wrecked the bow. The ship began to sink.

"One of their lifeboats is sinking. The other one isn't going back for it." Ho said. "Head for the lifeboat."

They stopped about fifty yards from the lifeboat. Castle could clearly see that Slaughter was standing in the stern of the lifeboat, staring at them.

"Ethan Slaughter?" He called.

"Who's asking?"

"Richard Castle."

"Thanks for telling me. I'll make damned sure I track you down and kill you when I get to shore."

Lt. Ho nodded to a SEAL and a long burst of heavy machine gun fire ripped through the life boat, knocking Slaughter over and holing the boat. The boat and its passengers soon slipped beneath the sea.

"Kind of ruthless." Rick said.

"I talked to the people at Barrow. Slaughter was a pirate and worse. People on this Earth don't have the resources for prisons. And, you have to enforce your own law outside of the few towns in the Arctic. Look, Mr. Castle, if we didn't do it, someone else would have to, after they killed a bunch more people."

Rick nodded. He didn't like it, but he couldn't think of a better way.

As they entered the Canadian Arctic, the _Katherine the Great_ began launching aerial drones to increase the area that they covered. One thing they soon discovered was that anyone who saw their ship or a drone headed in the opposite direction fast.

Then they found something. "Mr. Ho, Mr. Castle? Can you come here for a second?" One of Ho's petty officers called to them. Below decks was the combat information center. There, on a computer screen was a view from a drone.

"What is it, Hansen?" Ho asked.

"Take a look, sir. I'm keeping the drone as far away as I can in case they have radar, but look at the dock there. That's a sub tied up there. I'm sure of it."

Ho scratched his head. "Diesel powered and with an electric motor. That fits a sub. I'll bet that's Storm's boat." He leaned forward to try to get a better look. "Let's bring the drone back and we'll head for the sub. We'll be close enough tonight to use a smaller drone, so if they spot it, it'll look like a bird."

That night Ho, Rick, Kate, Simone and Tatiana, along with several SEALS sat in the CIC watching the drone feed.

"It's a sub all right, but a small one." The drone operator said. "I'll bet it doesn't carry more than ten or twelve people."

Ho nodded. "Leave two crew behind and the rest can be used to raid. Let's take a look at the land."

"Damn! There are a lot of wolves hanging around that little town. Take the drone lower, can you?"

"Shit!" Someone said. "The wolves are having dinner. Those are people they're eating."

"Have the drone sweep for a couple of miles inland and see if anyone else is around. Bring the drone back. We'll send it back in tonight and hit them then."

"There's hardly any night around here." Rick said. "Just a kind of dusk."

"People are creatures of habit. I'll bet they'll sleep when the clock says it's night."

The sun was low on the horizon when the SEAL platoon boarded rigid hulled inflatable boats and headed for shore. They had confirmed that there were no electronic emissions from the sub, but were unable to tell if it had any crew on it. Consequently, they landed down the beach from the sub, past a small hill that would keep anyone from seeing them. They hoped.

"You can stay in the boat." Kate whispered in Rick's ear.

"No. As soon as he told us about the redhead with this Storm, I thought of Alexis. I can't get it out of my head that she's here. With him."

They heard a crunch as the boat pulled up onto a graveled beach. The SEALs, as well as Rick and the ladies left the RHIBs and headed at a trot to the small village. Coming over a hill, they found some wolves eating human remains. Rick stopped and threw up, then ran after the SEALs.

Coming to the village, they slowed down, trying to figure out where everyone was. As Rick turned a corner of a house, he came face to face with a redhead. It wasn't Alexis.

"Meredith?" He said, stupidly.

Meredith grabbed for a pistol at her waist. "Raiders! " She screamed, pulling her pistol and firing.

He felt the round go past his ear, but couldn't shoot Meredith. He fired at her foot and missed. She took aim at his head, smiling as she did so. A roar sounded right by his ear and Meredith flew backwards, blood shooting from her head. A SEAL ran past him.

He remembered most of the firefight as a series of disconnected vignettes. A roughly dressed man trying to hold his intestines in. A woman, almost naked, screaming as she sat on the ground. Two boys beating on the corpse of a man while crying.

One incident stood out in his mind. Tatiana was on the floor of a weather beaten house with a man on top of her. He was pushing a knife down towards her eyes. He remembered his cold laughter. "I'll be the last thing you ever see, bitch." His shot took the top of the man's head off. It was only then that he realized that the man had his face. It was Storm.

Tatiana staggered up and grabbed his M4 carbine, stood over the dead Storm and fired the rest of the clip into his head until it was unrecognizable. Tears poured down her cheeks as she did so. Even when the clip was empty, she kept pulling the trigger until she began bashing his head with the butt of the weapon.

Castle walked over to her and put his arms around her and felt her collapse against him, sobbing. "It'll be okay, Tatiana. Let's get you out of here."


	18. Chapter 18

I, Spy

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I don't own me no Castle, pardner. Rating: M, in spots. Time: The future.

 **Chapter Eighteen. The Wild Bunch.**

They were back in the Mediterranean Sea aboard another carrier, _USS Kearsarge._ Happily, there was more room on the carrier and Rick and Kate had a stateroom with an almost double bed in it.

They had been called to Montgomery and Namura's office. Montgomery was just finishing a phone call when Rick, Kate, Simone and Tatiana arrived.

"…no real reason to tell them. I'll talk to you later." He hung up and motioned for the four to sit and also pointed to a coffee carafe by his desk. Once everyone had coffee, he spoke. "We've figured out what the bad Derrick Storm was doing. He'd found an abandoned Russian boomer, um, that's a slang term for a guided missile submarine with a full load of nuclear missiles. It had submerged in shallow water near Victoria Island. Storm hoped to get a crew on board and give it to a "non-state actor" as they're called that we're fighting on another Earth. Hoping to use them to blow our fleet there, and a few million innocent civilians, to radioactive bits. We've recovered the sub and removed he missile warheads. And now that Ms. Beckov has removed Storm, we're close to getting all of you back home. What do you say to that?"

Kate smiled. "I say, how about telling us what there's no reason to tell us when you were on the phone just now?"

Montgomery tried to bluff. "Why would you think that phone call had anything to do with you?"

Kate smiled back sweetly, "Because I know you. Several yous, in fact. Now tell us."

Montgomery held her eyes for a second, then looked away. "Okay. We've been tracking our Derrick Storm through his transfer device, but we're always behind him. He's taken to going from one Earth to another to keep us further behind him. And, the trace left behind by his device fades as time goes by."

"And why would you keep this from us?" Rick asked.

"That's not it. You told us you went to an Earth where the technology was early twentieth century and found a Kate Beckett who was an outlaw known as the K Becks Kid and an Alexis known as La Rojita, the redhead."

Castle nodded and looked at Kate for confirmation. "We arranged with the Earth One people to send them to an LA that was close to our time line in technology and I provided them with money to support them. Don't tell me those bastards double crossed us."

"No, but, as you know, there are an infinity of Earths out there, and some have histories that are very close to others. We tracked Storm to a world with a Kate Beckett and an Alexis Castle on it. Their story was much the same. Kate had been sexually assaulted by a Jerry Tyson and a group of men. She began killing the men, starting with Tyson. Alexis is apparently the daughter of a Richard Castle from that world who died when she was a teenager. She drifted out west and hooked up with the K Becks Kid. Between them, they killed all the men who'd raped Kate and also killed Tyson's wife, one Dr. Kelly Neiman. Then they left Texas far behind."

"Okay, so they're okay." Rick stopped and thought for a moment. "No they're not, are they? What happened?"

Montgomery sighed. "Are you sure you want to know?"

"Of course I do."

"They're now in Johnson County, Wyoming." Montgomery said.

"Shit! Not the Johnson County War."

Tatiana looked at Rick. "What the hell is the Johnson County War? How can you have a war in an American County?"

"It took place, at least in our Earth, in 1892. It was big ranchers against little rancher and farmers. It was pretty violent, but not really a war like you'd understand the term."

"And that's not what this Kate and Alexis are in." Montgomery said. Then added, "Not quite."

"Jesus!" Castle muttered. "Okay, what the hell are they quite in?"

"The Johnson County War on this Earth was twenty plus years ago. After that, they had several years of really cold winters followed by blazing summers. Things were so bad that all but the biggest and richest ranchers were driven out of business. Things have gotten better but now there's a new problem. There's a war in Europe and the US is selling a lot of things to the British and the other allies. Since the British control the seas, Germany and their allies can't get anything."

"So?' Kate said.

"So, some Eastern big money interests are selling frozen and/or canned beef to the Brits. They decided to cut out the middlemen and buy out Western ranchers whether they want to sell or not. Kate Beckett owns a fairly big ranch in Johnson County and she won't sell. They've decided to make an example of her."

"We're going to need to go there."

"Mr. Castle…" Montgomery began.

"We're going." Kate said firmly.

"We all are. "Simone added with Tatiana nodding.

"This is not necessary." Montgomery insisted.

"Buffalo, Wyoming!" Called the train conductor. "All passengers departing at Buffalo, Wyoming, this is it, folks."

Rick, Kate, Simone and Tatiana rose to exit the train as did their four companions. Montgomery had decided to send four SEALs with them once he discovered that he couldn't keep Rick and the women from helping a Kate Beckett in distress. In keeping with local prejudices, Lieutenant Ho and anyone not white were kept off the team. Chief Petty Officer Paul Richardson headed up their personal protection team.

All were dressed as more or less prosperous ladies and gentlemen. The men in dark suits with ties and either derby hats or wide brimmed Stetsons. The men carried Colt M1911A1 automatic pistols and both a 1903 Springfield rifle and a Winchester Model 1897 shotgun. The women carried Colt .380 pocket pistols in their purses, as they were ladies. When they got outside of town, they'd carry .45s and have Springfields in a scabbard on their saddles, just like the men.

They walked back to the horse car to get their mounts, then saddled the eight horses and put the packs on their four pack horses. They weren't sure how welcome they'd be in Johnson County so they had as much ammunition and supplies as they could get.

Castle checked where the sun was. "The train station is on the south side of town and the Beckett ranch is north of here. Should we ride through town? I don't know how the locals feel about anything."

"According to Mr. Montgomery, most of the townsfolk just want to stay away from any gunfire. They're neutral." Richardson growled.

"We'll ride through town." Kate said. "We need to get a look at it anyway."

The main street was unpaved, but dry. There were wooden, and in some cases, cement sidewalks though. The buildings, at least on the main street, were well built stone, brick or wood. The Buffalo Hotel at four stories was the biggest building in town. The Johnson County Bank was a substantial stone building with narrow, barred windows and steel doors.

"Someone's head our way." Richardson said softly.

The someone was a tall, angular gentleman in a brown suit and with a gold shield on his chest. He stopped right in front of the riders.

"Good afternoon, folks. You going hunting or something? You seem rather well armed."

"No. Not going hunting." Castle replied.

"Well, forgive my lack of manners. I'm Sheriff Roscoe Conklin, county sheriff. Wondering why you got all them guns."

"I'm an oil geologist." Castle said. "We been working down in Mexico, down Tampico way. If you want to stay upright there these days, you need to be able to defend yourself."

Conklin scratched his head. "I guess that makes sense. I ain't heard of no oil hereabouts, though."

"Not here for oil. I'm looking for my wife's sister. I understand she has a ranch nearby. In addition to family, I brought a few of my oil field roughnecks with me."

For the first time, Conklin's eyes focused on the women. "Well, I'll be. Three sisters? And two of 'em are the spitting image of Katie Beckett. I didn't even know she had a sister, let alone three."

Kate smiled at the sheriff. "I didn't know I had a sister until I ran into Tatiana and Simone. I'm Kate Castle, by the way."

Conklin took his hat off. "Well, I'm very pleased to meet you, ma'am. All of you. Don't that beat all? You're…"

"Triplets." Kate said. "And Simone is our younger sister. We were separated at birth, I understand, and somehow two of us got named Kate. Odd, isn't it?"

"I do guess so, ma'am." Conklin put his hat back on. "You'll have no trouble finding the Beckett ranch. Stay on the road out of town and when you cross the first bridge, it's on the right. Welcome to Wyoming, folks. You have a good time."

Once outside of town, everyone dismounted and the three ladies got their other weapons from the pack horses and then they rode on.

"This has got to be the bridge and the smoke on the other side of the hill has to be from the ranch." Kate said.

They rode to the top of the hill and looked down. The ranch house itself was a substantial brick building. There was a barn and stables built of wood and what might be a hen coop and a pig sty behind the barn. As they started to move downhill, someone ran from the barn yelling something and ran into the ranch house.

As they stopped, a blonde woman peeked out from behind the door. They could see the shogun she was carrying and they recognized her as Ann Hastings. "What do you want now?" She demanded harshly.

"I want to meet my sister." Kate replied.

"Sister? There isn't…."Ann stopped suddenly and opened the door to get a better look. "Oh my god! You're her. Both of you are her." She turned around. "Katie! Katie! Alexis! Come quick. You have gotta see this."

This Earth's Kate Beckett looked more tired and weather beaten than the other Kates. She wore chaps over Levi's and a blue work shirt. On her hip was a Colt .45 automatic and she had a large frame revolver in a shoulder holster. "What the hell is so damned important that…"Then she saw the two Kates and just stared.

"My name is Mrs. Kate Castle, this is our sister Tatiana and our little sister Simone."

The other Kate stood there open mouthed.

There was a flash of red and Alexis was standing beside Kate. "What's….Who….No! Are they…?"

"I'm Kate Castle, and yes, we are sisters of the Kate Beckett you know."

Katie Beckett stood there shaking her head. "I never knew I had sisters. Momma never said…."She stopped and smiled. "Come on down and set a spell. We have a lot to talk about, I reckon."

"We should get the horses…."Richardson began.

"Oh, yes. Yes! How silly of me." Cried Katie. "Ladies, help me get their horses to the stables and get their gear down." She laughed. "Oh! I have sisters."

Once the horses were taken care of, they sat in the parlor and drank coffee. "My daddy died when I was but five and Momma never said anything about having other kids. But she was a wild one, like me, I guess. How did you find me?"

"I never knew I had sisters until a year ago," Kate Castle began. "My husband is an oil geologist and we were living in Tampico, Mexico. We took a trip to New Orleans and one day I was looking in a dress shop and I looked up and found myself looking into my own face. We were both absolutely shocked."

Tatiana took over. "Our mother told us, me and Simone, that is, that we were adopted and that our real mother's name was Beckett, but that's all she ever told us. And then one day I looked up and here was Kate and her husband. We've all tried, but we don't remember a thing about our lives before….Well, before."

"I'm barely a year younger than Tatiana and Kate, or so I've been told, so I think they were still babies when we were adopted."

"But how did you learn about me?" Katie asked.

"In New Orleans we met a former clerk of the Federal court here named Lambeau, Charles Lambeau. He had to resign because of the consumption and went back home to New Orleans." Kate said." He told us there was a woman named Katie Beckett that looked exactly like Tatiana and me. We had to come and see you." Lambeau was real and had died of consumption and so would never be able to tell Katie Beckett that he had never met any so called sisters of hers.

They had decided that telling this Kate Beckett and Alexis about the alternate Earths would not be a good idea. Rather, they would pose as long lost relatives and do their best to solve Katie's problems.

They had been talking for over an hour when Hastings suddenly shot out of her chair and headed for the window. "Riders. Two of 'em. Could be scouts for a bigger bunch."

Alexis grabbed a telescope and joined Hastings at the window. "No. It's that bastard Boyle and his sleazy clerk."

"Alexis!" Katie cried. "Watch your language. You are a lady, remember."

"Who is this Boyle?" Rick asked her.

"He's the banker in town. I always seem to have trouble with bankers. I reckon he's here to remind me that my mortgage is coming due."

Boyle, well dressed and overweight, stopped in front of the ranch house with his skinny and obviously unhappy clerk behind him. Boyle was surprised to see the number of people come out of the house with Katie and Alexis.

He tipped his hat, just barely. "Afternoon, Miss Beckett. You have people staying with you?"

"My sisters that I never knew I had, one's husband and their friends. What can I do for you Mr. Boyle?"

"As I'm sure you're aware, your mortgage is due in eight days. I thought I'd ride out and remind you." He held the mortgage out for her perusal.

Katie glared at him. "I don't need no reminding. What I need is time. In another month the buyers from the East will be here and I'll have plenty of money for you. If I can just have…"

Boyle shook his head. "The mortgage is clear. You have eight days. No more. Certainly, but no less."

"How much is the mortgage?" Rick asked.

"Two thousand, two hundred and eighteen dollars." Boyle replied. He turned to his clerk. "Isn't that correct, Mr. Wenz?"

"Correct to the dollar, sir." Wenz said with a sneer.

"Is that all?" Rick said. "No problem. I can pay that off right now. Why don't you come inside and I'll do just that?"

"Mr. Castle!" Cried Katie. "I can't let you spend that amount of money. We hardly know each other."

"True, but you are family, Katie. And my wife would never forgive me if I let you lose your ranch."

Alexis was elbowing Katie as Rick spoke, muttering for her to take the money.

"Mr….Um, what is your name again?"

"Richard Castle, Mr. Boyle. Katherine Beckett is my wife. She's Katherine Castle now, of course."

"I will not take a personal check or any form of IOU." Boyle said.

"Oh, cash money, of course, Mr. Boyle. Coin of the realm. And when she sells her cattle, Katie can pay me back."

"Mr. Castle…" Katie began.

"Rick. We're family, so I'm Rick."

"Rick, this is so much money for you to be paying, I cannot allow this."

"It may be a lot to you, but it's a mere pittance to me."

Tatiana spoke up. "Our family in New Orleans is quite wealthy. And Rick is more than just an oil geologist. He's a part owner of several very lucrative oil fields in Mexico and the US. Why, I spend more on dresses every year than your mortgage. Of course we'll pay. You're family."

Rick added. "And like I said, when the buyers show up next month, you can send the money to us in Mexico, or to New Orleans."

Boyle and Wenz got down off their horses and followed everyone into the ranch house. Rick opened up his saddle bags and took out a large wallet stuffed with local currency. He counted out the money with a smile. "Now, if we can just have you give us a receipt and mark the mortgage as paid?"

Boyle did so with very poor grace, then he and Wenz left quickly and rode off.

"He didn't seem too happy about getting paid." Simone said.

"You're right. " Alexis replied. "His bank has a lot of money from the people who are trying to buy out all of the ranchers around here. They aren't going to be at all happy with him."

Katie walked to the window. "I'll bet we'll be having some trouble before long." Sooner than Katie thought, actually.

The sun wasn't down when Ann Hastings jumped out of her chair again. "More riders coming. Lots more." There on the ridge overlooking the ranch buildings were more than fifty riders. Ann grabbed the telescope. "They all have hoods over their heads so if any of us survive, we can't identify them.

CPO Richardson was the first to head for their weapons, closely followed by his SEALs and the rest. Katie opened a glass fronted case and handed Ann and Alexis Winchester rifles and shotguns as well as ammunition.

"What is that?" Katie asked, pointing to a weapon being assembled by one of the men.

"A Browning Automatic Rifle." He said shortly. "The Army don't have any yet, but I have a friend."

"And this is a .577 Holland and Holland elephant gun." Richardson said, lifting his rifle for all to see.

"Damn few elephants around here." Alexis said.

"True, but if they get into any of the outbuildings, this'll go straight through the walls." Richardson looked at Castle. "How about we take the upstairs?"

Castle nodded and the four SEALs headed upstairs. Once upstairs they could add night vision sights to their weapons that would attract too much attention from the ranchers down stairs.

Outside the raiders began a slow trot towards the ranch house. One nervous rider loosed off a shot from way too far away.

"Good. They shot first." Katie said.

"Let's make sure we shoot last." Castle said under his breath.

No sooner had the raiders fired than they heard the first short burst from the BAR and the loud crack of the elephant gun along with the sounds of the two Springfield rifles, all from upstairs. The four people downstairs began firing at the same time.

The raiders had lost more than a dozen men by the time they were able to take cover in the outbuildings around the main house.

The local gunslingers were pretty good at their jobs, but they hadn't had the years of training the SEALs had. Nor did they have the equipment. Richardson took out a small device that looked somewhat like a bird and tossed it out the window. The "bird" flew to the stables and settled in an inconspicuous corner and began sending back video. Richardson was able to tell where each gunman was inside the stables and fired a short burst from the BAR, killing one after another.

When the stables were clear, the "bird" moved on to the barn. One of the gunmen, wondering why there were no shots coming from the stables sent a man to check.

"Don't shoot him, either coming or going. We want them to find their friends dead in the stables. That'll give them something to think about."

The gunfighter ran to the stable and quickly ran back. Richardson watched the video on his tablet. "The guy in the suit with the derby hat on looks like he might be the leader." He looked from the video to the barn, muttering under his breath. "Five, maybe six feet to the right of the main barn door, and about twenty feet back." He aimed his BAR at about where he thought the boss might be, then fired a whole twenty round clip into the barn. "Outstanding! Got him. And his people are starting to run out of the back of the barn."

He flew the "bird" above a wood pile that three gunmen had taken cover behind. He was pretty sure that his bullets wouldn't penetrate the stack of wood. "Pete, can you bring that elephant gun over here. There are three guys behind it. One is kneeling just about dead center. See if you can take him out."

The SEAL came over, took a quick look at the video and set up his shot. He didn't get a kill shot, but the three ran away, one limping badly.

Meanwhile, downstairs Rick and all of the women were fighting off other gunmen. One man burst out of a cornfield holding a lit stick of dynamite. Both Rick and Kate fired, knocking him down and causing him to drop the dynamite. He tried desperately to crawl away, but was blown to pieces by the blast. His friends began throwing dynamite from well inside the cornfield, but they were too far away to hit the house. As the gunfighters saw their friends running, more and more started running. Soon all were gone.

Katie walked around the house, checking everyone. "I don't believe it. We're all still alive. No one is even hurt.

"Not quite." Simone said. "I got hit by some flying glass. I have a nasty cut on my hand."

Once they were sure that they were now alone, they went outside to check on the gunmen. All were dead, either killed outright or bled out from their wounds. All were found to have a hundred dollars in new bills on them.

"They'll be back." Ann said. "Damn them, but they'll be back."

However, the next person they saw was Sheriff Roscoe Conklin. He rode out all by himself the next morning. He stopped outside and waited for Katie to come out.

"Come in and have some coffee, Sheriff." She said,

The sheriff nodded and dismounted. Once inside, he sipped his coffee. "I hear you had a problem here last night."

"We left the dead where they fell so everyone could see. They came armed, wearing hoods over their heads and shot first." Katie said.

"Won't do you no good." Conklin said. "I ain't got enough people to go after them and there's more coming. I got a friend in the telegraph office. They sent to Texas for more gunfighters and back east for some strikebreakers. And down south for some boys, too."

"How many." Richardson asked.

"Lots. Don't know how many that is. You got maybe a week before things really get ugly. I'd suggest you leave here, ma'am. I don't want to see you get killed. I'll escort you over the state line to Montana and you can get a train somewhere safe there. Once you're gone, no one will bother you."

"And what am I supposed to do? The ranch is all I have. All we have." Katie shook her head. "I won't leave. I can't leave."

"Katie, we can help you. Loan you money to get you started somewhere else." Kate said.

Katie shook her head. "You all go with Sheriff Conklin to Montana. I don't want your deaths on my conscience."

"I'm staying." Alexis said.

"Me too." Ann added.

"So are we then." Kate said finally.

They spent three days fortifying the ranch house with sandbags and knocking loopholes in the walls. But every minute they were looking over their shoulders, expecting an army of gunmen to be riding over the hill. However, the next person they saw was Sheriff Roscoe Conklin.

"Howdy, ladies. Gents." He said, touching the brim of his hat.

"If you can, come and set a spell." Katie said.

"Oh, we have lots of time." Conklin said, with a somewhat mysterious smile.

Once seated in the kitchen and with cups of coffee for everyone, Conklin gave them the news.

"The US has declared war on Germany and her allies. That's the big news throughout the country. The big news locally is that President Wilson has set up a food conservation board to make sure the military and the civilian population has enough food. Beef is going to be rationed from now on. And the government will make sure there is no hoarding or price gouging. Which means the price of beef has fallen. Oh, you'll still get a fairly decent price for your beeves, but nothing like what the folks in the East were imagining. It'd cost more for them to drive you off your land than the ranch is worth. Funny, that."

"I'm not sure about funny." Rick said.

"Anyway, my pal at the telegraph office says that telegrams have gone out to Texas and the East and the South telling all them hard boys to stay home. Looks like the range war is over."

They stayed with Katie at the ranch until her herd was brought to the railhead and sold. Katie paid Rick back, with interest. Rick tried to invest in her ranch, but Katie would have none of it, and Rick could hardly explain that his fortune would be valueless to him on another Earth.

Katie never saw any of them again although she made inquiries. Eventually she concluded that the whole group had returned to Mexico and had disappeared in the revolutionary chaos that swept over that country. But she never forgot them.


	19. Chapter 19

I, Spy

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I don't own Castle, Pilgrim. Rating: M, occasionally. Time: The future.

 **Chapter Nineteen. The Green Berets.**

"We have a problem." Montgomery said as he came into the Castle's quarters in Norfolk, Virginia.

"I know." Rick said. "My wife's month long vacation is way more than a month long and it's not been one damn bit restful. Bad Derrick Storm is dead. Good Derrick Storm can find his own way home, wagging his tail behind him and we should go home too. Tail wagging optional. When do we go?"

"We have an Alexis here."

That got Rick's attention. "An Alexis? Or my Alexis?"

"An Alexis. Her dad is Richard Castle, but he writes books based on his wife, an ADA in San Francisco."

"Is she another me?" Kate asked, suddenly interested.

Montgomery nodded. "As near as we can tell, her grandma Johanna is alive. Kate Beckett met Castle while she was a student at Stanford and he was a visiting professor of contemporary literature. They met, he and Alexis moved to California and the rest is history."

"So how did she get here?"

"She and her father were apparently kidnapped by some of the Demming Earth people, apparently to attract our Derrick Storm. It appears it worked, partially."

"Partially? How partially?"

A man we're presuming is our Storm rescued her and brought her to one of our outposts on that Earth, then he disappeared. But her father is still missing, maybe dead."

"She must be frantic with worry." Castle said.

"She wants to go back and find him, which is a very bad idea. The planet is a war zone."

"But if she had someone with her?" Castle asked.

"Two someones with her?" Kate added.

"Several someones with her?" Tatiana added. Simone just nodded.

"Can you come with me for a briefing?" Montgomery asked, successfully not smiling.

They drove to Norfolk Naval Base and were taken to an ordinary looking building with armed guards on the inside. A naval officer, a Lieutenant Gray by her nametag, nodded and began a power point presentation.

"This briefing is classified as secret." She began. "The Earth in question is called Gondwanaland by our people. Some five hundred million years ago, most Earths had one giant continent which we call Gondwana or Gondwanaland. This Earth is still one mega-continent, hence the name."

Gray showed a photo of a human wearing some sort of animal hide clothing and carrying a shield, a spear and a club. "There are humans on Gondwanaland, but their social organization has gotten no further than clans. Say, some two or three hundred families all with some claim to descent from a common ancestor. Technologically, a few lucky clans are near surface deposits of iron, coal, copper, tin, or whatever and have metal tools and weapons. Most clans have wooden or stone weapons. Most clans would be lucky to put a hundred warriors in the field. Since they can't afford to take a lot of casualties, their warfare is based on hit and run raids to grab loot, usually food, tools, or slaves."

The next photo was of a man carrying a modern assault rifle and a hand woven bag that appeared to carry his spare ammunition.

"About six years people from Demming's Earth showed up. They looked around and found a couple of the most aggressive clans. They provided them with modern weapons and other gear and set them loose on the rest of the planet. Anyone who joins up voluntarily is accepted into their army. Everyone else is a slave. Or if they're too old to work, they're killed off. The rearmed major clans can now put a thousand or more warriors into the field. They could pretty much crush anyone they came across. But they had a problem."

The next picture was a rough sketch of a blue circle. "Our technology allows us to send pretty much anything through to another Earth. The biggest thing we've ever sent is a three quarters of a million ton super tanker. As far as we know, there's no limit to volume or weight. But Demming's people have a problem. Their transfer points are limited to a circle about two and a half meters across. They can easily bring in people, light infantry weapons but anything else would have to be disassembled and then reassembled. So, a couple of hundred of their special forces have armed a half a dozen super clans, or maybe we should call them tribes or even nations."

"What the point of taking over such a technologically backward place?" Kate asked.

"We're not sure. We know their technology limits them severely to the number of Earths they can visit. Maybe they figured that as long as they could get there, they should take the place over."

"But now…."

An organizational chart of some kind came up on the screen.

"They're causing us to expend resources on a planet that we have no use for. We have an Amphibious Strike Group on Gondwanaland. It consists of a _Wasp_ class big deck amphib as the flagship. The _Wasps_ are small aircraft carriers that specialize in moving Marines from ship to shore, although they do have a dozen or so F 35 fighters and F 51 drones, but the rest of tilt rotors and helicopters to move the Marines and their gear."

"They also have one of the small carriers you helped save in Darwin, Australia. They're set up to carry mix of some eighteen F-35s and F 51s, plus tilt rotors carrying radars to expand the eyes of the fleet."

"There are three more smaller amphibs, four destroyers, two frigates and a sub. All of this supports a reinforced Marine battalion."

Castle frowned. "Why not just use the Marines to flatten Demming's people?"

Montgomery answered. "Several reasons. The friendly locals know we and our enemies are only there for each other. And they get worried about a military force with huge ships and over a thousand warriors complete with tanks, artillery and gunships. They totally freaked out when we arrived, scared shitless of us. They do accept us because otherwise they'd be in deep shit, but they're still terrified of us. Now we keep the ships well off shore and use the Marines for raids, usually in platoon strength, and occasionally company sized. But it still freaks the locals out. And Demming's people are spread out all over hell and gone, a dozen here, a half dozen there and so on. We'd have to kill off most of the tribes Demming's people have armed and supplied. It sounds a lot like genocide."

Namura spoke up. "Plus there's the politics of the thing. Like in the old Cold War on Earth, both sides kept things from escalating out of control. While we might be able to flatten the Demming Earth's troops on this planet, they might strike back on a planet where we're weaker. Best to keep things as they are."

"Even if the war goes on forever for the people here?" Castle said sarcastically.

"Better than having them fried by a nuclear weapon." Montgomery snapped back.

"I think it would be a good idea to go see Alexis Castle." Tatiana said.

Alexis was at first overjoyed at finding her father and the woman she considered to be her mother alive and well. Then she was disappointed to find they were a different Rick and Kate.

"You're going to find my dad?" She asked.

"That's the plan." Rick replied.

"I'm going with you." She said determinedly.

"Alexis, you're not really trained for this…." Kate began.

"This is my father for one. Secondly, I've been studying martial arts since I was five. Thirdly, I'm an expert pistol and rifle markswoman. And lastly, I'm going with you."

"Martial arts? Shooting? When?" Rick demanded.

"After that bully in kindergarten, and after you said laser tag was getting boring. Well, the other you."

Three days later, the five found themselves in an Osprey tiltrotor getting ready for the flash of blue light that would signal that they had crossed to another Earth.

When the blue light flashed, a voice came over the intercom. "Okay, people, we're here. We've got the task force on radar and we'll be there as soon as they land some birds that are ahead of us. Be about ten or fifteen minutes."

They were met by a man in camouflaged fatigues as soon as they deplaned. "Welcome to _USS Savo Island_. I'm Lieutenant Harry Brubaker. Please follow me to your briefing."

They followed the officer across a busy flight deck jammed with moving aircraft and crew in different colored shirts performing tasks that Rick was totally ignorant of. As they reached the ship's island, a combat drone settled to the deck and was rushed by a dozen people who pushed it to one side, opened a panel and began some task. Then they were inside.

They were led through a maze of corridors until they got to a tiny office with just a number on the door. Lt. Brubaker knocked. "The civilians are here, sir."

The door opened and a tall, slim blue eyed man with sandy hair motioned for them to come in. "I'm Major Mike Henry, US Army Special Forces. I'm the liaison with the Navy. I understand you want us to help you retrieve this young lady's father?" He pointed to Alexis.

"Absolutely." The redhead said.

"That may be more difficult than you think. Let me use an analogy here. Remember the Native Americans? Most of the tribes were supreme individualists. They only followed leaders when they felt like it. If one agreed to go on a raid, and decided just before the attack to go home, no one would say anything. It can be really frustrating dealing with the locals some times. I know. It's like trying to herd cats."

"Can't we use Marines?" Kate asked.

"We'll need locals to scout for you and find this gentleman. They don't like to work with Marines, they find their discipline and willingness to take casualties, unnerving. Bizarre. Odd. Totally unlike the way they'd do things. We make every effort to keep the locals and Marines apart."

Henry pulled down a map. "We picked up Ms. Castle just south of the Lang Vei Special Forces Camp. We have an Alpha Detachment there and three small clans. Counting everyone, men women and children, they can put about two hundred people together to defend the camp against raiders. But, they have to go outside of the camp to tend their fields. For patrols, counter raids and such, they can only put maybe seventy five or eighty warriors in the field. Plus a dozen SF operators."

"Do we have any idea where Mr. Castle, um, the other one is?"

Henry shook his head. "Nary a clue. The opposition doesn't have aircraft like we do and damned few ground vehicles, so they walk everywhere. It's harder to track foot traffic. Ms. Castle was with her dad the day before she got grabbed by some guy and taken to Lang Vei. That was weeks ago. They could be anywhere by now."

The rest of the briefing was about this Earth and the people on it. Henry talked fast and probably left out something they would need, but a planet is so damned big, it's hard to teach some strangers everything.

The next morning they found themselves in a helicopter, headed for dry land. The landing kicked up a haze of red dust and out of the dust came the Operational Detachment Alpha commander, Captain Hank Barnes. The captain couldn't have been over five feet, eight inches tall, but Castle estimated he weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds. He had a bull neck, very broad shoulders and arms and legs like tree trunks. He wore a battered billed cap, with a camouflaged shirt and what looked like a sarong. They found out that the local men wore a knee length sarong like garment while the women wore a sarong that covered them to their ankles.

Barnes took them to his headquarters. "I'm not sure how I can help you. I have three small clans here. The Sandree, the Themenso, and the Goollard. If we get hit it can find about two hundred people, men and women, ten years old to sixty, to defend the camp. But to go outside the wire, I got maybe sixty or seventy."

"My father is out there." Alexis said coldly.

"Oddly enough, everyone here is someone's father, son, brother, sister, mother or something." Alexis looked away and Barnes continued. "I have patrols out, but they'll be back tonight. And we're waiting for Esmro the Peddler."

"A peddler?" Tatiana asked. "Why?"

"About five hundred miles to the north of us is the technological center of this Earth. They have iron and coal deposits and make what manufactured goods this planet has. But don't think of them as being industrialized. It's all craftsmen turning out a limited number of products. But, peddlers buy their stuff and load them onto boats. The boats go to ports and unload. They have big fairs and festivals with everyone selling all they can. Small time peddlers like Esmro buy a couple of mule loads of goods and head for the backcountry, which means here. He makes a regular circuit each year and when he comes, everyone talks to him and…."

"And he's like an intelligence agent." Tatiana finished.

"More like a gossip columnist." Barnes nodded. "And since we control the seas, we keep the local ships safe and we sell some stuff to the locals. Not enough to upset the local economies, but we do give people a lot of ideas. Come back in a hundred years and you'll see an industrial revolution. Or maybe just a bunch of clans fighting each other. We'll see."

The patrols came in before nightfall. They reported the woods around the camp were very quiet. Unnaturally quiet.

"What does that mean?" Alexis asked.

"Animals quiet down when men are about. Since none of my patrols got ambushed, I think that means were going to get raided. Sleep with one eye open tonight, people."

Shortly after the moon set that night, the attack began. The Castle party was sleeping in a bunker when a short burst of automatic weapons fire wakened them. There was a second of silence followed by the sound of all hell breaking loose.

Tatiana sorted out the sounds of assault rifles, machine guns and grenade launchers and then picked up the thump of outgoing mortar fire. "Stay in the bunker." She yelled at Alexis who was headed for the bunker's exit. Tatiana grabbed the redhead and pulled her back.

Rick and Kate peered out through a firing slit. "Can you tell one from the other?" He yelled over the sounds of firing.

Kate tried to make sense out of what she was seeing. She could see tracers flying back and forth, both red and green. She cursed for not knowing which side used which colors. A flare arched into the air and exploded above them. In the sudden burst of light, she could see a group of men aiming some sort of long tube at them. "Shit!" She yelled and pushed Rick down just as a flash of light flared in front of the bunker. There was an explosion above her that deafened her for a moment and left her ears ringing.

"What was that?" Both Tatiana and Simone yelled.

"Recoilless rifle or RPG maybe?" Rick replied.

Kate looked at him. "Research?"

"They're reloading. Shoot them." Tatiana yelled.

They rushed to the firing slits and poured round after round into the weapon's crew and the riflemen covering them. A kneeling man fell backwards and the weapon slewed upwards at a crazy angle as it fired, sending the round into the air. One crewman was already down and the other fled.

As soon as it had begun, the attack was over. They could hear Barnes yelling and giving orders. He stuck his head inside their bunker. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I guess." Castle said, looking around and seeing that everyone was okay.

"How the fuck did those bastards get in here." Barnes yelled and then ran off. Rick and Kate looked at each other then went after Barnes, followed by the other women.

"Captain!" Someone called. "Bunker 12 on the perimeter. You gotta see this."

By the time Rick and everyone got there, a crowd had formed around the bunker. "What happened?" Rick asked a soldier.

"This is a four man machine gun bunker, with three dead machine gunners. Throats slit, the gun gone and the barbed wire in front of the bunker cut. Somebody sold us out."

A quick head count showed that someone named Thollo the Fat was unaccounted for.

"I never did trust that bastard." Barnes growled. He looked at the lightening sky. "Be dawn in half an hour. We'll send out a patrol to go after the raiders. Maybe they had the brains to slit Thollo's throat so he wouldn't sell them out. "

"I'll go." Alexis said.

Barnes shook his head. "No, this is no place…"

"My father is out there. I'm going whether you like it or not!"

Rick looked around at the ladies. "That means we're going as well."

The patrol consisted of two dozen local militiamen, dressed in a mixture of camouflage clothing and locally made items. Leading the patrol was a slim, wiry African American sergeant named Callan. The sergeant briefed Castle and the women as they stood by the entrance to the camp.

"Chances are the raiders are long gone, but they do like to try to take their dead and wounded with them. Local religion holds that you go to the afterlife with your body as it was here. So, the locals like to chop up any bodies they find so the dear departed have to wander around in the afterlife in bits and pieces. So, keep your eyes open, people and pay attention to me. If I say to do something, do it now. Understand?"

Everyone nodded. "Understood." Castle said.

The land had been cleared for about three hundred yards around the camp, but after that they entered an old growth forest. Over the course of centuries, the larger, taller trees had blocked the sunlight that shorter trees and brush needed to survive. They had died of and rotted away, leaving only the tallest trees and the occasional mushroom or symbiotic plant on the forest floor which was carpeted with fallen leaves.

About a mile from the camp, the point man of the patrol stopped and called Callan forward. Castle could hear the sergeant cursing. "Come on up, people. But be careful."

They found Callan and the point man looking at the ground. Castle looked at the ground too. All he saw was the ground.

Tatiana, however, nodded. "Horses. They had horses here. No dead or wounded left behind, so they're long gone."

"We should look around." One of the militiamen said. "Maybe they buried some dead nearby. They do that sometimes."

"We should head back to the camp." Callan said.

The militiaman shook his head determinedly. "Two months ago they took my brother when he was out hunting. We haven't even found half or him. My dead brother is in the afterlife in pieces and I say we should…"

Callan cut him off. "Okay. Half the patrol sets up here in case things go bad. Go in groups of three and be back in half an hour. Move it."

Callan set about setting up a defensive position. "Too damned much room down here on the forest floor. There's no place to hide if we get hit." Before Castle or anyone could reply, Callan went off to reposition a grenadier to his liking.

Alexis walked over to Castle. "Do you think my dad might have been…..You know? What they do to bodies here?"

Castle thought for a second. "I think if they were going to kill him, they'd have done it already. Don't worry. No matter what, I'll take care of you."

Alexis glared at him. "I don't want to be taken care of. I want my daddy back."

Castle walked over to where Kate, Simone and Tatiana were standing. "This Alexis is a little tougher than most we've run into."

Tatiana shrugged. "She's been taking martial arts since she was a child and she knows her way around weapons. Maybe that's just happenstance, or maybe something had happened to them and she felt she needed to be ready for anything."

All four looked over at Alexis who seemed to be busy checking her assault rifle.

"She doesn't seem like the type who shares." Kate said, then blushed. "And I know the type very well."

A militiaman came running into their position and ran straight to Callan. "Move out everyone. They found someone." Glancing at Alexis he added, "It's the body of Esmro the Peddler."

They followed the militiaman for several hundred yards to where the remainder of the militiamen were gathered around something. Callan, Castle and Kate pushed their way through the group.

"It's Esmro all right." Callan said. "All they did was slit his throat and steal his goods. No mutilation."

"That means they just wanted to keep him from talking to us. This wasn't personal, just business." Castle said.

Callan looked at him. "Getting your throat cut seems pretty personal to me."

Rick thought about trying to explain _The Godfather_ to Callan, but decided not to bother.

"We found something. "A militiaman said, holding up a battered book with a deerskin cover.

Callan looked at it. "It's Esmro's journal. Mostly what he's sold and what people are asking for that he didn't have. Some special orders. We'll read it later, but I'm betting he didn't draw a map to the missing Mr. Castle."

Alexis spoke. "No, but I'll bet it will tell us where he's been. Something he saw or heard made then want to silence him. If we can backtrack where he was, maybe we'll find my dad."

Esmro's journal went all the way back to his first days as an apprentice to another peddler, but the more recent entries did show where he'd been since he'd set out on his most recent trip. They had a roadmap of sorts to follow.

And a roadblock.

"Like hell." Barnes said. "I don't have enough people as it is to defend this camp. If the other locals ever get off of their collective asses and get their shit together, they could take us. All that's keeping them from overrunning the place is that each clan wants to take over everything we have. I can't afford to lose any of my best men. And if you have any hopes of getting this Castle guy back, you'll need my best men."

"We won't need that many." Castle said.

Barnes glared at him. "Oh, and how do you propose to raid an enemy camp and free this guy without that many men?"

Tatiana spoke up. "We don't need that many men for a patrol. We might not find anyone out there. We just need to look around. Say a half a dozen men. Volunteers only."

Barnes was weakening. "I'll need to have a veto over the men who volunteer. There are some I can't afford to lose."

"We wouldn't dream of depriving you of your best men." Kate lied smoothly.

Barnes nodded and looked off into the distance, scratching his unshaven face. "There are a half a dozen or so kids that have more balls than brains that'd really go for this kind of thing." Barnes smiled." Let me talk to Obdo, the local priest first, though."

They got twice the number of volunteers they needed and Barnes selected six. All six were young, but fit and well armed. Barnes provided them each with a new set of camouflaged fatigues and boots as well as plenty of ammunition.

Then Obdo the priest came out. He gathered the young men around him. "You are going on a holy quest to return a lost father to his child. Such a mission is not looked upon by the gods as a normal raid or scout. You must swear to see this through to the end, whatever that may be. I have brought the holy book for you to swear to this before our gods and all of our people gathered here." Obdo brought a large, but rather tattered book out from under his cloak.

The young men looked at each other. These were supreme individualists, used to coming and going entirely as they pleased. To swear to not give up their quest was highly unusual.

One young man stepped forth. "It is an honor to take such an oath. We are not the usual ruck, we are brave and dedicated men. Warriors for a cause. I shall take the oath and should I betray my oath, cast me out of my clan, for I will no longer be worthy." He took the oath in a loud, clear voice and when he was done, the other five men had little choice but to follow suit.

Oddly, the team was joined by Sergeant Callan.

"You're coming?" Rick asked.

"Need to stretch my legs." Was the only reply.

Once out of the immediate area of the camp, the team entered into thick woods and they slowed to a crawl.

"Can't we go any faster than this?" Tatiana asked Callan.

"Sure, we can move into the old growth forest where there's plenty of open ground between the trees. And there'll be scouts out, wondering who's coming. There's only twelve of us. Some enemy clan sees us, they send for all their people, we're dead."

"Just asking." Tatiana replied.

The wisdom of moving slowly was demonstrated two days later. One of the young militiamen came back to the main team, moving as fast as he could without making too much noise.

"Raiding party ahead. They look like Arauna. One long way from home if they are."

"How far ahead?" Callan asked.

"Four hundred meters."

"How many?"

"I counted one hundred and six. They're mostly resting after eating. They have about twenty captives with 'em. Young women mostly."

Callan looked around him and thought for a minute. "They're coming back from a raid, then. They'll want to move fast so no one catches them. Best time to hit a raid is when they're coming back. They'll be tired, some'll be hurt and they're loaded down with loot."

"We're just going to let them get away?" Alexis demanded.

"See anyone who looked like Mr. Castle here?" Callan asked the militiaman.

"Nary a one."

Callan turned to Alexis. "You want to give up any chance of getting your dad, go attack the raiders single handed, be my guest."

Alexis glared at him, then sat with her back against a large tree.

Shortly after noon, the raiders moved on, away from the direction that the team was moving in. They waited an hour or so and checked the raiders' campsite, just to be sure nothing important was left behind.

"Shit." Callan said. "Shit, shit and shit."

"What is it?" Rick asked.

"Behind the tree. Look if you want to, but I wouldn't."

But they did look. What they found was a naked teenaged girl, her legs spread widely apart and her skull bashed in.

"So, we let them do this?" Alexis snapped.

"They've been doing this to each other for a thousand years or more. Want to go chase 'em down and take a few with you? Go ahead."

Alexis spat and walked away.

The first village on their list was friendly and helpful, but they had no knowledge of any man who looked like Rick.

The next village was hostile, so they watched for several days, then took a young girl captive and interrogated her. She cried and begged to be let go and insisted she had seen no one like Rick. They spent a day walking back the way they came, hoping that when the girl was released and ran home, the angry villagers would go the wrong way.

On the way to the next village, they finally got lucky.

The scout came in with a smile on his face. "It's him. Just ahead. Tied up with six men. Two foreign soldiers and four locals." He smiled again. "And they must be intending to travel fast. They have a remuda of a dozen or more horses. I think they're settling in for the night."

Very, very slowly they had moved into an ambush position. They were arranged in an L shape so that they wouldn't shoot at each other. The smaller leg of the L had managed to work themselves between the enemy and their horses. Callan was the closest to the captive Richard Castle and was going to grab him as soon as the shooting started.

Rick had been nervous all night long, waiting for the dawn to come. He looked over at Tatiana was seemed to be fast asleep. Kate was on the other side of her and looked to be asleep as well. To his other side was a militiaman who was awake and now staring up at the stars.

He whispered to Rick. "Maybe a half an hour until first light. Callan will shoot first, remember?"

Rick nodded and began one of the longest half hours of his life. He could just see it getting light when one of the enemy soldiers woke up and began walking straight towards him, unzipping his pants as he did. The man was about to pee when he looked down and saw Rick. Before he could open his mouth to shout a warning, the militiaman shot him. Then all hell broke loose.

Rick fired an entire clip, a single shot at a time and when he went to insert a fresh magazine, he found that there was no more firing.

He heard Alexis scream, "Daddy!" and rush to her father, who was sitting up, having his bonds cut by Callan.

"Time to talk later." Callan yelled. "Get the horses saddled and get ready to move out." As he spoke, one of the militiamen went around firing a shot in to the heads of the enemies, just to be sure. Rick remembered that for a long time.

But, they were soon mounted and on their way.


	20. Chapter 20

I, Spy

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: So, did you think I bought Castle since I started this story? Rating: This chapter is K. Time: The future.

 **Chapter Twenty. Coda.**

"We've found another place Storm has been." Montgomery announced.

Rick continued looking out the window onto Norfolk, Virginia. "I'm truly happy for you. Now can we go home?"

"We're still waiting to make sure there are no more killers out there gunning for you. But it won't be long. A couple of weeks at the most."

"You know we have actual lives, don't you. We'd like to get back to them." Kate said.

"And I'd like to start my new life." Tatiana added.

"Just a couple of weeks." Montgomery said. "Now I have to get going. The people who saw Storm won't talk to us."

Castle laughed. "Won't talk to you? Why didn't I think of that? What's their problem?"

"They don't believe we're real."

Castle laughed again. "Why?"

Montgomery shrugged. "When you're an intelligent two hundred foot long surfing whale, you tend to ignore things human sized."

Castle suddenly say up and looked at Montgomery. "A huge, intelligent surfing whale?"

Montgomery hid his smile, knowing he'd hooked him. "Well, gotta go."

"But how do they surf without crashing onto the beach?"

"Mavericks." Montgomery called over his shoulder as he was leaving.

"What's mavericks?" Tatiana asked as Rick headed for the computer.

Rick was too busy at the computer to answer.

"Rick?" Kate said, in her sultriest voice, walking up behind him and pushing her boobs into his back. "What's mavericks, lover?"

That got his attention. "It's a surfing place just south of San Francisco. Because of the shape of the ocean floor there, the surf breaks a couple of miles off shore. It'd be perfect for surfing whales. Wouldn't that be cool? To see surfing whales?

Kate turned to the other two women. "Anyone for surfing?"

Tatiana and Simone shrugged.

"If he's going, you're going." Simone said. "And that means I'm going."

"Me, too." Tatiana grinned. "Maybe I can get a nice all over tan?"

Three days later there was no talk of all over tans as they huddled together in a temporary building in what would have been Princeton-by-the-Sea, if this Earth had developed human life rather than intelligent whales.

"I thought surfing was done in hot weather, like Hawaii?" Tatiana said grimly.

Oswald Nelson, the head of the team trying to communicate with the whales shook his head. "You need a big storm coming out of the North Pacific to get the waves right for surfing. They're just building up now and you can hear whales from all over the Pacific Coast headed for here." Nelson turned on one of his devices and a series of whistles and groans filled the small room.

"Can you tell what he's saying?" Castle asked, his eyes lighting up.

"We've made some progress on a translation program. Let me turn it on. It'll be in normal human voice _range, though."_

" _Heavyosity, dude! Have you done any more on the Weinstein Conjecture?"_

" _Major bummer dude. I got in an argument with (Squeak) about Riemann Hypothesis and that was that. Oh, wow! Look at the fins on that babe. She can slap me any old time."_

"Wait!" Cried Tatiana. "The Weinstein Conjecture and the Riemann Hypothesis? Those are unsolved math problems. What are whales doing talking about those?"

"That's why we're here." Nelson said. "The whales don't have hands to build tools and change their environment and living under water causes other problems, so they've turned their minds to pure mathematics. They're quite brilliant, you know. We've learned so much. If we could only get them to talk to us."

"Why won't they talk to us?" Castle asked.

"They don't think we're real. They think we're voices in their heads. We're just too small for them to pay attention to. Some of the earlier researchers went out in scuba gear to try to talk to them with tragic results."

Kate put her arm on Rick's shoulder. "You are not going surfing, Moondoggie."

He nodded. "Got that, Gidget."

A young woman stuck her head in the door. "Hey there, they're getting some really clean waves out there. You wanna come and see?"

Rick immediately headed for the door, followed by the three women. He caught up with the young woman. From her sun beached air and deep tan, Rick guessed she as a surfer.

"Have you surfed Maverick's? I mean some other Maverick's?"

She nodded. "I've surfed all over. Mavericks, Baja, the Banzai Pipeline, the Skeleton Coast, the Gold Coast…..Just all over, dude. And there are a million places I'd love to surf. There are places out there where no one has ever surfed before. Who can say that they're the first on to have surfed someplace?"

'So how did a surfer chick get here?"

The woman laughed. "I'm Caroline Hood. I have a PhD in math from MIT. God, but I wish Massachusetts had good surfing. Maybe I'll try to do post doc work at Stanford when I'm done here."

They arrived at a set of large binoculars set up on a tripod.

"Take a look, Mr. Castle."

Castle leaned over a bit and looked through the eyepieces. He could see whales swimming towards the coast and then saw the waves begin to rise and then he could see whales moving like surf boards in the curl of the waves. Then a huge whale shot over the top of the wave and flew through the air, turning a complete summersault in midair and diving headfirst into the breaking wave, landing between two other surfing whales.

"Wow!" Castle muttered, settling in behind the binoculars.

He watched for several hours before Kate finally came and got him.

"Hey, lover. Are you getting kind of cold?"

Rick suddenly noticed he was cold, even with the winter clothes he had on. "Yeah. I think my face has icicles on it. And my butt is frozen solid."

"I bet I could warm you up."

Rick laughed. "You could turn an iceberg into steam in seconds."

"I'm not interested in icebergs." She took his hand and led him indoors to the small room they shared where he was thoroughly warmed up.

Later, they cuddled. Rick ran his hands through her hair. "I could never use intelligent, surfing whales in a Nikki Heat could I?"

"Somehow I'm imagining Nikki surfing nude on the cover." She teased.

"No. Rook is the only one who sees Nikki in the nude. And the same with us."

"Unless you're trying to save a Russian girl's life."

She felt Rick stiffen, "Kate, I swear to you that…"

"You would do it again in the same circumstances and I'd want you to. I don't ever want to share you, but not at the cost of another person's life. Especially if that someone is another Kate Beckett. Or Tatiana Beckov, or anyone else like me."

"So perhaps I can share something with you again?"

"Why, Mr. Castle. I thought you'd never ask."

The next morning, they all looked in on the attempts to communicate with the whales. Nelson was speaking into a microphone that broadcast his translated words to the whales. "Hello, we are a race called human beings and we live on land. We'd like some help with our math problems. Can you assist us?"

There was a brief silence, then a whale spoke.

"Dude! I have such a freaking great imagination. I just imagined that whales can live on land. Is that totally weird or what?"

"Man, you are totally whackoid. Live on land? How would you move or eat? Totally out of sight, Dude." another whale said.

A third whale joined in the conversation. "I think it's totally groovy. We should make up a song about whales living on land. All the old dudes would be like totally freaking!"

"I'm not in your imagination!" Nelson cried. "I'm real. Will you listen to me?"

"I hear it too, pal. Do you think it's some kind of resonance from the waves bouncing off the ocean floor?"

The whales discussed that until they were out of range.

"They just won't listen!" Nelson said, angrily.

"Because you're not talking to them properly." Rick said suddenly.

Nelson glared at him. "I have a PhD in linguistics. Mr. Castle. Our team has…."

"Only one surfer." Castle finished for him.

"You need to talk to them in their own language. Hood here can do that. But you need something to let them know that what they are hearing isn't just random noise that occasionally sounds like words, or those pesky voices in their heads." Castle smiled. "Is there some kind of math problem we've solved that they haven't?"

One of the mathematicians nodded. "There's Fermat's Last Theorum. They haven't solved that yet."

"Can you get a copy of the solution for Hood?"

"Mr. Castle…."The mathematician began.

"Yes we can. And someone get Hood in here."

After a short talk with Rick, Hood sat before the microphone and began speaking to the whales. "Yo, Dudes. What it is?"

"Oh, man." Said a whale. "There's that weird voice again."

"Just ignore it, bro."

"You can't ignore me." Said Hood. "You just can't see me because I'm invisible?"

"Invisible?" The whale laughed. "No such thing."

The other whale wasn't so sure. "How do you become invisible?"

Hood laughed. "That's for me to know and for you to find out."

The first whale snorted. "That's BS. There are no invisible whales. It's just some kind of resonance from the action of the waves over the sea floor."

"You guys ever try to solve a problem states that no three positive integers _a_ , _b_ , and _c_ satisfy the equation _a_ _n_ \+ _b_ _n_ = _c_ _n_ for any integer value of _n_ greater than two?"

"Sure we've worked on it."

"How about I give you the answer?"

"Okay." Said both whales.

Hood began reading a document that neither she nor anyone but a couple of mathematicians understood. And the whales of course. With Hood "translating" the mathematicians began, at long last, a conversation about higher math.

They had been at it for a couple of hours when a new whale spoke up. "Hey, invisible chick, do you know the invisible guy that was here a while ago?"

"I know a lot of invisible dudes and dudettes. What was this one like?"

"He had a freaking far out problem, involving a supposition that there were like totally, radically different other realities. It was a trip. A total trip."

Hood spoke quickly to the others. Then, "I think I may know the dude, a bit. What exactly did he ask?"

The whale responded with a barrage of math formulas that seemed to Rick to have excited everyone. As the mathematicians looked over the equations, Hood announced to the whales that she was going to go feed and bag some zee's.

It was the next morning before they figured out what Storm, who it must have been, playing the invisible whale, had gotten from the whales.

"This is fascinating, Mr. Castle. It appears that Storm has found an entire class of alternate universes, previously unknown to us. He's apparently interested in one particular universe."

Montgomery had joined them. "I think we should go back to Norfolk and see what we can find out about this universe. Do you want to come with me, Rick?"

Rick looked at Kate, Simone and Tatiana. He knew that they weren't anywhere as interested in surfing whales as he was. And a whole new class of unknown Earths? That sounded fascinating. "If the girls want to go, it's fine with me."

Several weeks later, they met in their condo in Norfolk. Montgomery had news.

"We were afraid that these new alternate Earths would be vastly different from any we've found before. You know, highly radioactive, an atmosphere of deadly gasses, maybe entirely different physical laws of the universe. Maybe working magic." Seemingly accidentally, Montgomery was looking right at Castle when he said the word "magic"."

"Magic?' Castle had taken the bait.

"Not a bit." Montgomery replied. "We sent drones to several dozen Earths, including the one we think Derrick Storm went to and found nothing out of the ordinary. Well, of course, all of the alternate Earths are out of the ordinary in some way."

"No magic at all?" Castle asked.

"None."

"What did they find?" Kate asked.

"Another alternate Earth like some others we've found. In this one, the Mongols successfully invaded Japan in 1274 CE. There was no divine wind this time. Having conquered Japan, the also conquered Okinawa, then a separate nation, Taiwan and got a foothold on the Philippines. The Mongols sent expeditions along the Eastern coast of Siberia and one of them crossed the Bering Strait between Siberia and Alaska and sailed south. Eventually, a few years later, a Mongol colony was founded at San Francisco. The Mongol Empire eventually fell apart and the colony was cut off from Asia. Currently, there are some European colonies on the East coast of America, the Mongols on the West Coast and Native Americans in between. Storm is apparently somewhere in the Mongol colony."

"So, can we go?" Rick asked.

Kate just rolled her eyes as Simone began singing, "If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair."

They rode down the western slopes of the Sierras into California's Central Valley, coming down through the Yosemite Valley, mainly because Rick and Kate wanted to see it. Rick and the three women were followed by ten SEALs led by a Lt. North.

Their cover was that they were fur trappers who had crossed the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains to trap beaver, and now with a string of pack horses carrying the furs, we're headed to the West Coast to try to get a ship back to the East Coast colonies.

The Mongols had little contact with the outside world except for an occasional trading ship, but they knew that Europe was more scientifically advanced than they were. Consequently the party carried both Smith and Wesson, and Colt pistols, and Winchester rifles, all firing cartridge ammunition, although these hadn't been invented yet anywhere on this Earth. They hoped the local Mongols wouldn't know about that.

They left the mountains behind and reached the valley floor and headed north towards where San Francisco would have been, or as it was called in this world, Beautiful Bay City.

"Riders ahead." Said Lt North. "Looks like a Mongol patrol."

It was just that. Twenty Mongols on horseback approached. "They ride bigger horses than the Mongol Steppe ponies they over ran half the world with."

"But they're still armed with bows and swords." Tatiana added.

They had two Mongol speaking SEALs with them. The Mongol patrol leader seemed friendly and indicated that they could sell their pelts in Beautiful Bay City for gold. He asked about their weapons. He had heard of firearms, and had actually seen a wealthy Mongol trader demonstrate a flintlock pistol.

"Ask him if he'd like a demonstration." North said to one of the interpreters.

The Mongol agreed at once. One of the SEALs dismounted and took his Winchester from its scabbard, walked away from the horses and pointed out an oak tree some two hundred yards away. He dropped to one knee and fired ten times, hitting the tree every time.

The Mongol leader yelled something to one of his men, who began riding towards the oak tree, firing arrows as he went. As he got to the tree, he drew his saber and chopped off a branch of the tree. He grabbed the branch as it fell and rode back, tossing the branch with nine arrows embedded in it at the feet of the SEAL shooter. The Mongols all laughed, and after a second, so did the SEALs. The Mongol leaped off his horse and recovered his arrows, and held them over his head, indicating he was ready to shoot again.

After the Mongol patrol left, Kate was looking down at the branch. "These people are dangerous."

North nodded. "But there's a problem. It takes years to train a bowman to be that good. The English long bowmen started when they were children to be ready when they were young men. You can take an eighteen year old and teach him to hit a man sized target at six hundred yards in six months. But, that's still damned good shooting. We don't want to mess with those boys."

They continued to ride north, stopping in small farming villages, until they reached the Beautiful Bay City. It seemed odd to see a small, Medieval Chinese city sitting on the southern end of the Golden Gate, but they had seen many stranger things.

They found an inn to stay in and had lunch, planning to rest for a day and then try to sell their furs, all while looking for Derrick Storm. That didn't work out as planned.

Just before dinner there was a knocking on Rick and Kate's door. They opened it to find a well dressed and officious looking man standing there. He bowed slightly and handed them a scroll. They called for their interpreters.

"Looks like we'll be eating out. This is from the governor. He requests our presence at dinner tonight."

Rick and Kate exchanged a look. "Tell him that we need to wash and change before we meet so august a person as the governor. Lay it on thick about how honored we are."

The messenger seemed happy and moved off to the end of the hallway.

In keeping with their cover story, they had no real dress clothes, but after a quick bath and a change into clean clothes, they felt they were as ready as they'd ever be.

The messenger from the governor led them downstairs to a large carriage, pulled by four yaks. Down the sides of the carriage were well upholstered, embroidered benches that were quite comfortable to sit in.

"It looks like were going first class." Rick said.

"Let's hope it stays that way." North muttered, his hand straying to the pistol under his jacket.

The Governor's mansion was pretty spectacular, all marble, Persian rugs, highly polished wood and equally highly polished brass. A uniformed flunky met them at the door and led them to a large formal dining room.

The Governor met them at the entrance. Be bowed ever so slightly. "Greetings. I am Besud Altan, the governor. Please sit down and enjoy a meal with me."

They sat and a succession of attractive young ladies began serving them. Local fare, such as venison and corn were mixed with rice, cabbages and coconuts, obviously originally imported from Asia. They were also served rice wine and beer.

All through the meal the governor smiled them, pointing out delicacies for them to try.

Finally, they had only drinks left. Everyone had tried to drink as little as possible to remain sober.

"I need to talk to you about two things." Governor Altan said. "One, your furs are very valuable. I can offer you gold for them and aid you in getting a ship back to your own side of the continent. Or anywhere else you might wish to go."

Rick and Kate did their best to bargain with Altan, although their hearts weren't in it. Eventually, a deal was struck.

The Governor smiled widely at them. "You may have noticed that I speak your language."

They all looked at each other before Rick replied. "Yes, and you speak it quite well. Where did you learn it?"

"Where indeed?" The Governor looked around the table and then his eyes settled on Rick. "What would you say, Mr. Castle if I told you that I learned it from a man who looks exactly like you?"

Castle gulped. "I'd say you've met my twin brother."

"I believe I have. And may I ask why you all are really here?"

Luckily, before leaving Norfolk, they had gone over various cover stories. Rick picked the one that seemed to fit the best. "These gentlemen, "He pointed to the SEALs," did head west to trap furs. However, my wife and her two sisters came with me, looking for my brother. My brother is in some kind of great danger and he wouldn't tell anyone what it was. He's the older brother by some four minutes and all of our lives he's treated me as if he's an adult and I'm just a child. For some reason he felt he had to flee rather than fight whatever it was that threatened him. We did find out that he bought maps showing the entire continent and talked to people who'd been into the interior of the continent. One man even claimed to have gotten to the Great Ocean, but further north."

The Governor smiled coldly. "You really expect me to believe that you brought four women all the way across the continent."

"Excuse me, Governor." Tatiana interrupted. "There's a carved wooden screen behind me with a carved chrysanthemum in the upper left corner. Is the screen valuable at all?"

"No, not at all." Replied the Governor, obviously curious about the odd question.

As the word "all" was leaving his lips, Tatiana stood, whirled around, drew a knife from her boot top and threw it unerringly into the center of the carved chrysanthemum. As she did so, Kate drew her pistol and fired a round just under the knife.

Simone smiled at the Governor. "I can't do that, but if you'll let me get my rifle and move that screen eight hundred yards away, I can show you a little something."

The Governor managed a smile. "You have married into a very interesting family, Mr. Castle."

"Don't I know it."

"I believe you mean my friend no harm. He's staying at a Buddhist monastery at the Great Clear Lake, just east of here. I'll have passes made out for you in the morning so you can visit him."

The Great Clear Lake was known as Lake Tahoe to Rick and Kate and they left the Governor's mansion to prepare for their journey. The next morning they took a large boat to what would be, in their world, San Pablo Bay, then Suisun Bay and finally on to the Sacramento River. Each night they stopped at a rest house where they were served meals and had a warm and cozy place to sleep.

Somewhere past what would have been Sacramento, they had to leave the boat behind and travel on horseback. They rode in easy stages through the last part of the Central Valley and on into the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Again, each night they were able to stop at a Mongol guest house to eat and rest.

When they arrived at the monastery, it looked like it had come straight from Asia. The monastery was dominated by a pagoda, and the grounds were covered in carefully raked gravel and stones placed in accordance with feng shui. An elderly saffron robed monk walked out to greet them as they rode up.

"Mr. and Mrs. Castle, Miss Renoir and Miss Beckov, and your companions. Welcome. Please dismount and come with me for some refreshment. Brother Storm will be with you soon."

"How do you know who we are and who we want to see?" Kate asked.

"We have our ways, Mrs. Castle. We have our ways."

"That's unbelievable. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen and heard this myself." Tatiana said.

The monk laughed. "Our ways involve carrier pigeons from the Governor."

They dismounted and followed the monk to a small, airy building where they were fed and served tea.

Before they had finished with their meal, they were joined by a tall, blue eyed man with a shaven head and wearing a saffron colored monks' robe. He laughed when he saw Rick. "So my friend Governor Altan was right. They did send another Derrick Storm to bring me back."

Rick shook his head. "My name is Rick Castle. I'm a novelist in my world and I've written a whole series of books about a spy named Derrick Storm. But I got bored with him and have written about a New York police detective and captain named Nikki Heat. She's based on my wife here."

Storm raised his eyebrow and looked at Kate, Tatiana and Simone. "You live on an Earth where you can have multiple wives? Very lucky for you."

"Kate is his only wife." Tatiana said, pointing to Kate. "And until several months ago, I would have loved to have killed you. I'm Tatiana Beckov."

Storm nodded. "If you still wish to kill me, please do so. I owe you that much."

Tatiana looked at him for a long minute and then shook her head. "I think I'm beyond that now."

"As am I." Storm said. "That's why bringing me back will do you no good. I'm not the same person I was, and I'll never be him again."

"What happened?" Rick asked.

Storm sat and poured himself a glass of tea. "I was on a Demming occupied world and I got unlucky. I was stopped by a military patrol in a Jeep while carrying a submachine gun under my coat. I killed the four soldiers in the Jeep, but one got off a burst from his assault rifle. He killed two students, teenaged girls who were unlucky enough to have been walking by at the wrong time. I looked at them and at the soldiers. Two were NCOs who probably wanted to be there, but two were young. They were probably conscripts, just kids themselves. I'd killed before, of course, and I'd seen collateral damage, but this time it did something to me. I kept thinking about it and the more I thought, the less I wanted to kill again." Storm raised his arms. "Yes, I know what Demming and his people are like. They need to be stopped, but I can't kill anymore. I just can't."

North, the SEAL commander looked at Storm and then at Castle. "I've known men that this has happened to. I'm not sure that there's any point in taking him back if he won't go back in the field. Kind of pointless, in fact."

Castle thought about it. "I agree, but my butt can't take any more time on horseback. We'll stay a few days, if that's okay with the monks."

Storm nodded. "They'd love to have you."

While North and the SEALs ran, swam and took target practice, Rick and Kate took long romantic boat rides on the lake. Tatiana had gravitated to the kitchen and was preparing Russian food for everyone and teaching the monks as she did. Simone spent all of her time with Derrick Storm.

After a week, it was time to leave. Simone walked up to Rick and Kate. "I've finally found my Rick. I'm staying here with Derrick. We love each other. It's odd that it happened so fast, but I suppose you were right, the universe, all of the universes, want the Ricks and Kates to get together. Even if one of them was named Kathleen and one is named Derrick."

The three women hugged and then she hugged Rick. "Thank you for being so good to me. You didn't have to and I appreciate it."

Castle shook his head. "I couldn't _not_ have been good to you."

'Rick, might I suggest that you take Tatiana back with you and get her the same cosmetic surgery you got me and make her the new Simone Renoir?"

Rick and Kate turned to Tatiana. "How about it? Do you want to run a restaurant in the Big Easy?"

She nodded. "I'll have them eating shashlyk and pirozhki in no time."

Ray Montgomery arranged for Tatiana to get cosmetic surgery back at Norfolk, so they had to wait for two months for the surgery to heal. But one dark night back on Rick and Kate's own Earth, an LCU swam out of the ocean and deposited three people in front of a burned out house on the South Island of New Zealand.

Rick, Kate and the new Simone walked up to the road and looked back at the ocean. They saw nothing but scenery.

"Do you think people will accept out cover story?" The new Simone asked, a bit nervously.

Kate nodded. "Unluckily for us, we do get chased by evil doers, so one more set chasing us around South Island with us unable to contact civilization will be accepted."

"And it's not like anyone will ever learn the truth. They'll have to accept it." Rick added.

The three began walking north on the road towards the nearest town.

"At least we've seen the last of the alternate Earths." Rick said.

Little did they know.

THE END

 **Author's note: Up next will be a three part story featuring Captain Kate, the pirate, after that, we'll have a story set in season seven entitled Who Are You?**


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